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THE MAKERS 



MODERN ROME 





POPE GREGORY. 



Frontispiece. 



THE MAKERS 



MODERN ROME 



IN FOUR BOOKS 

I. HONOURABLE WOMEN NOT A EEW 

II. THE POPES WHO MADE THE PAPACY 

III. LO POPOLO: AND THE TRIBUNE OF THE PEOPLE 

IV. THE POPES WHO MADE THE CITY 



BY 

MRS. OLIPHANT 

AUTHOR OF "THE MAKERS OF FLORENCE : 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY HENRY P. RIVIERE, A.R.W.S. 
AND JOSEPH PENNELL 



Wefo fgorfe 
ACMILLAN AND CO. 

AND LONDON 
1895 




All rights reserved 



4= 



Copyright, 1895, 
By HACMILLAN AND CO. 



D 



Worfaonti Press 

J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith. 
Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 






/ 



??r 



*$ 



I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK 

WITH THE DEAR NAMES OF THOSE OF MINE 

WHO LIE UNDER THE WALLS OF ROME: 

AND OF HIM, THE LAST OF ALL, 

WHO WAS BORN IN THAT SAD CITY; 

ALL NOW AWAITING ME, AS I TRUST, 

WHERE GOD MAT PLEASE. 

F. W. 0. 

M. W. 0. 

F. R. O. 



PREFACE. 

Nobody will expect in this book, or from me, the 
results of original research, or a settlement — if any 
settlement is ever possible — of vexed questions which 
have occupied the gravest students. An individual 
glance at the aspect of these questions which most 
clearly presents itself to a mind a little exercised in 
the aspects of humanity, but not trained in the ways 
of learning, is all I attempt or desire. This humble 
endeavour has been conscientious at least. The work 
has been much interrupted by sorrow and suffering, 
on which account, for any slips of hers, the writer 
asks the indulgence of her unknown friends. 



CONTENTS. 



BOOK I. 

HONOURABLE WOMEN NOT A FEW. 

CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 
ROME IN THE FOURTH CENTURY ........ 1 

CHAPTER II. 

THE PALACE ON THE AVENTINE 14 

CHAPTER III. 

MELANIA 29 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE SOCIETY OF MARCELLA . , 43 

CHAPTER V. 

PAULA 65 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE MOTHER HOUSE 89 

xi 



xii CONTENTS. 

BOOK II. 

THE POPES WHO MADE THE PAPACY. 

CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 
GREGORY THE GREAT 119 

CHAPTER II. 

THE MONK HILDEBRAND 181 

CHAPTER III. 

THE POPE GREGORY VII 230 

CHAPTER IV. 

INNOCENT III . 307 

BOOK III. 

LO POPOLO: AND THE TRIBUNE OF THE PEOPLE. 

CHAPTER I. 

ROME IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY , 381 

CHAPTER II. 

THE DELIVERER . 402 

CHAPTER III. 

THE BUONO STATO 428 



CONTENTS. xiii 



, CHAPTER IV. 

PAGE 
DECLINE AND FALL . 460 



CHAPTER V. 

THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 486 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE END OF THE TRAGEDY 493 

BOOK IV. 

THE POPES WHO MADE THE CITY. 

CHAPTER I. 

MARTIN V. EUGENIUS IV. — NICOLAS V 513 

CHAPTER II. 

CALIXTUS III. —r PIUS II. — PAUL II. — SIXTUS IV 552 

CHAPTER III. 

JULIUS II. — LEO X 581 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE 

Pope Gregory Frontispiece 

Colosseum by Moonlight, by H. P. Biviere 37 

Temple of Venus and River prom the Colosseum (1860), by 

H. P. Biviere 73 

Temple of Vesta, by II. P. Biviere Ill 

Arch of Constantine, by H. P. Biviere 153 

The Forum, by H< P. Biviere 171 

Arch of Titus, by H. P. Biviere 209 

Santa Maria Maggiore, by H. P. Biviere 247 

Arch of Drusus (1860), by H. P. Biviere 267 

Island on Tiber, by H. P. Biviere 287 

The Capitol, by J. Pennell 317 

Porta Maggiore, by H. P. Biviere 327 

In the Campagna (1860), by H. P. Biviere 347 

St. Peter's and the Castle of St. Angelo, by II. P. Biviere. .367 

Approach to the Capitol (1860), by H. P. Biviere 387 

Theatre of Marcellus, by J. Pennell .407 

Aqua Felice, by H. P. Biviere 463 

The Tarpeian Rock, by J. Pennell .481 

Ancient, Medieval, and Modern Rome, by J. Pennell 503 

Modern Rome : Shelley's Tomb, by J. Pennell . 519 

Fountain of Trevi, by II. P. Biviere 527 

Santa Maria del Popolo, by H. P. Biviere 547 

xv 



xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE 

Piazza Colonna, by J. Pennell ■> .... 565 

Old St. Peter's, from the engraving by Campini 585 

Modern Eome : The Grave of Keats, by J. Pennell 593 



ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT. 

The Colosseum, by J. Pennell 1 

The Palatine, from the Aventine, by J. Pennell 13 

The Ripetta, by J. Pennell 14 

On the Palatine, by J. Pennell 27 

The Walls by St. John Lateran, by J. Pennell 29 

The Temple of Vesta, by J. Pennell 42 

Churches on the Aventine, by J. Pennell 43 

The Steps of the Capitol, by J. Pennell 51 

The Lateran from the Aventine, by J. Pennell 64 

Portico of Octavia, by J. Pennell 65 

Trinita de' Monti, by J. Pennell 76 

From the Aventine, by J. Pennell 87 

The Capitol from the Palatine, by J. Pennell 89 

San Bartolommeo, by J. Pennell 97 

St. Peter's, from the Janiculum, by J. Pennell ... .103 

St. Peter's, from the Pincio, by J. Pennell 107 

Porta San Paola, by J. Pennell 115 

The Steps of San Gregorio, by J. Pennell 119 

Villa de' Medici, by J. Pennell 133 

San Gregorio Magno, and St. John and St. Paul, by J. 

Pennell . 145 

The Piazza del Popolo, by J. Pennell 157 

Monte Pincio, from the Piazza del Popolo, by J. Pennell .. .167 

Ponte Molle, by J. Pennell , 180 

The Palatine, by J. Pennell 181 

Pyramid of Caius Cestius, by J. Pennell 197 

Trinita de' Monti, by J. Pennell 207 

The Villa Borghese, by J. Pennell 220 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xvii 

PAGE 

Where the Ghetto stood, by J. Pennell 228 

From San Gregorio Magno, by J. Pennell 230 

In the Villa Borghese, by J. Pennell 306 

The Fountain of the Tortoise, by J. Pennell 307 

All that is left of the Ghetto, by J. Pennell 377 

On the Tiber, by J. Pennell 381 

On the Pincio, by J. Pennell 402 

The Ldngara, by J. Pennell 428 

Porta del Popolo (Flaminian Gate), by J. Pennell 459 

Theatre of Marcellds, by J. Pennell 460 

The Borghese Gardens, by J. Pennell 486 

Tomb of Cecilia Metella, by J. Pennell . . . 493 

Letter Writer, by J. Pennell 510 

.Piazza del Popolo, by J. Pennell 513 

On the Pincio, by J. Pennell 533 

In the Corso : Church Doors, by J. Pennell 542 

Modern Degradation of a Palace, by J. Pennell 552 

Fountain of Trevi, by J. Pennell 581 

A Bric-a-brac Shop, by J. Pennell 600 



BOOK I. 
HONOURABLE WOMEN NOT A FEW. 




THE COLOSSEUM. 



BOOK I. 
HONOURABLE WOMEN NOT A FEW. 

CHAPTER I. 



ROME IN THE FOURTH CENTURY. 

THERE is no place in the world of which it is less 
necessary to attempt description (or of which so many 
descriptions have been attempted) than the once capital of 
that world, the supreme and eternal city, the seat of empire, 
the home of the conqueror, the greatest human centre of 
power and influence which our race has ever known. Its 
history is unique and its position. Twice over in circum- 
stances and by means as different as can be imagined it has 
conquered and held subject the world. All that was known 
to man in their age gave tribute and acknowledgment to 



2 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

the Caesars ; and an ever-widening circle, taking in conn- 
tries and races unknown to the Caesars, have looked to the 
spiritual sovereigns who succeeded them as to the first and 
highest of authorities on earth. The reader knows, or at 
least is assisted on all hands to have some idea and concep- 
tion of the classical city — to be citizens of which was the 
aim of the whole world's ambition, and whose institutions 
and laws, and even its architecture and domestic customs, 
were the only rule of civilisation — with its noble and 
grandiose edifices, its splendid streets, the magnificence and 
largeness of its life ; while on the other hand most people 
are able to form some idea of what was the Some of the 
Popes, the superb yet squalid mediaeval city with its great 
palaces and its dens of poverty, and that conjunction of 
exuberance and want which does not strike the eye while 
the bulk of a population remains in a state of slavery. But 
there is a period between, which has not attracted much 
attention from English writers, and which the reader passes 
by as a time in which there is little desirable to dwell upon, 
though it is in reality the moment of transition when the 
old is about to be replaced by the new, and when already 
the energy and enthusiasm of a new influence is making its 
appearance among the tragic dregs and abysses of the past. 
An ancient civilisation dying in the impotence of luxury 
and wealth from which all active power or influence over 
the world had departed, and a new and profound internal 
revolt, breaking up its false calm from within, before the 
raging forces of another rising power had yet begun to 
thunder at its gates without — form however a spectacle full 
of interest, especially when the scene of so many conflicts 
is traversed and lighted up by the most lifelike figures, and 
has left its record, both of good and evil, in authentic and 
detailed chronicles, full of individual character and life, in 
which the men and women of the age stand before us, occu- 
pied and surrounded by circumstances which are very differ- 



i.] ROME IN THE FOURTH CENTURY. 3 

ent from our own, yet linked to us by that unfailing unity 
of human life and feeling which makes the farthest off 
foreigner a brother, and the most distant of our primeval 
predecessors like a neighbour of to-day. 

The circumstances of Rome in the middle and end of the 
fourth century were singular in every point of view. With 
all its prestige and all its memories, it was a city from which 
power and the dominant forces of life had faded. The body 
was there, the great town with its high places made to give 
law and judgment to the world, even the officials and exec- 
utors of the codes which had dispensed justice throughout 
the universe ; but the spirit of dominion and empire had 
passed away. A great aristocracy, accustomed to the first 
place everywhere, full of wealth, full of leisure, remained ; 
but with nothing to do to justify this greatness, nothing but 
luxury, the prize and accompaniment of it, now turned into 
its sole object and meaning. The patrician class had grown 
by use, by the high capability to fill every post and lead 
every expedition which they had constantly shown, which 
was their original cause and the reason of their existence, 
into a position of unusual superiority and splendour. But 
that reason had died away, the empire had departed from 
them, the world had a new centre : and the sons of the men 
who had conducted all the immense enterprises of Eome 
were left behind with the burden of their great names, and 
the weight of their great wealth, and nothing to do but 
to enjoy and amuse themselves : no vocations to fulfil, no 
important public functions to occupy their time and their 
powers. Such a position is perhaps the most dreadful that 
can come to any class in the history of a nation. Great and 
irresponsible wealth, the supremacy of high place, without 
those bonds of practical affairs which, in the case of all 
rulers — even of estates or of factories — preserve the equi- 
librium of humanity, are instruments of degradation rather 
than of elevation. To have something to do for it, some- 



4 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

tiling to do with it, is the condition which alone makes 
boundless "wealth wholesome. And this had altogether 
failed in the imperial city. Pleasure and display had taken 
the place of "work and duty. Eome had no longer any im- 
perial affairs in hand. Her day was over : the absence of a 
court and all its intrigues might have been little loss to any 
community — but that those threads of universal dominion 
which had hitherto occupied them had been transferred to 
other hands, and that all the struggles, the great questions, 
the causes, the pleas, the ordinances of the -world -were now 
decided and given forth at Constantinople, was ruin to the 
once masters of the "world. It was -worse than destruction, 
a more dreadful overthrow than anything that the Goths 
and barbarians could bring — not death which brings a sat- 
isfaction of all necessities in making an end of them — but 
that death in life which tills men's blood with cold. 

The pictures left us of this condition of affairs do indeed 
chill the blood. It is natural that there should be a certain 
amount of exaggeration in them. We read daily in our own 
contemporary annals, records of society of -which -we are per- 
fectly competent to judge, that though true to fact in many 
points, they give a picture too dark in all its shadows, too 
garish in its lights, to afford a just view of the state of any 
existing condition of things. Contemporaries know how 
much to receive and how much to reject, and are apt to 
smile at the possibility of any permanent impression upon 
the face of history being made by lights and darks beyond 
the habit of nature. But yet -when every allowance has been 
made, the contemporary pictures of Eome at this unhappy 
period leave an impression on the mind which is not contra- 
dicted but supported and enforced by the incidents of the 
time and the course of history. The populace, which had 
for ages been fed and nourished upon the bread of public 
doles and those entertainments of ferocious gaiety which 
deadened every higher sense, had sunk into complete de- 



i.] ROME IN THE FOURTH CENTURY. 5 

basement. Honest work and honest purpose, or any hope 
of improving their own position, elevating themselves or 
training their children, do not seem to have existed among 
them. A half-ludicrous detail, which reminds us that the 
true Roman had always a trifle of pedantry in his pride, is 
noted with disgust and disdain even by serious writers — 
which is that the common people bore no longer their proper 
names, but were known among each other by nicknames, 
such as those of Cabbage-eaters, Sausage-mongers, and other 
coarse familiar vulgarisms. This might be pardoned to the 
crowd which spent its idle days at the circus or spectacle, 
and its nights on the benches in the Colosseum or in the 
porch of a palace; but it is difficult to exaggerate the de- 
basement of a populace which lived for amusement alone, 
picking up the miserable morsels which kept it alive from 
any chance or tainted source, without work to do or hope of 
amelioration. They formed the shouting, hoarse accompa- 
niment of every pageant, they swarmed on the lower seats of 
every amphitheatre, howling much criticism as well as bois- 
terous applause, and keeping in fear, and disgusted yet 
forced compliance with their coarse exactions, the players 
and showmen who supplied their lives with an object. 
According to all the representations that have reached us, 
nothing more degraded than this populace — encumbering 
every portico and marble stair, swarming over the benches 
of the Colosseum, basking in filth and idleness in the brill- 
iant sun of Eome, or seeking, among the empty glories of 
a triumphal age gone by, a lazy shelter from it — has ever 
been known. 

The higher classes suffered in their way as profoundly, 
and with a deeper consciousness, from the same debasing 
influences of stagnation. The descriptions of their useless 
life of luxury are almost too extravagant to quote. " A loose 
silken robe," says the critic and historian of the time, 
Ammianus Marcellinus, speaking of a Roman noble, — " for 



6 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

a toga of the lightest tissue would have been too heavy for 
him — linen so transparent that the air blew through it, 
fans and parasols to protect him from the light, a troop of 
eunuchs always round him." This was the appearance and 
costume of a son of the great and famous senators of Rome. 
" When he was not at the bath, or at the circus to maintain 
the cause of some charioteer, or to inspect some new horses, 
he lay half asleep upon a luxurious couch in great rooms 
paved with marble, panelled with mosaic." The luxurious 
heat implied, which makes the freshness of the marble, the 
thinness of the linen, so desirable, as in a picture of Mr. 
Alma Tadema's, bids us at the same time pause in receiv- 
ing the whole of this description as unquestionable ; for 
Rome has its seasons in which vast chambers paved with 
marble are no longer agreeable, though the manners and 
utterances of the race still tend to a complete ignoring of 
this other side of the picture : but yet no doubt its general 
features are true. 

When this Sybarite went out it was upon a lofty chariot, 
where he reclined negligently, showing off himself, his curled 
and perfumed locks, his robes, with their wonderful em- 
broideries and tissues of silk and gold, to the admiration of 
the world ; his horses' harness were covered with ornaments 
of gold, his coachman armed with a golden wand instead of 
a whip, and the whole equipage followed by a procession of 
attendants, slaves, freedmen, eunuchs, down to the knaves 
of the kitchen, the hewers of wood and drawers of water, to 
give importance to the retinue, which pushed along through 
the streets with all the brutality which is the reverse side 
of senseless display, pushing citizens and passers-by out of 
the way. The dinner parties of the evening were equally 
childish in their extravagance : the tables covered with 
strange dishes, monsters of the sea and of the mountains, 
fishes and birds of unknown kinds and unequalled size. 
The latter seems to have been a special subject of pride, for 



i.] ROME IN THE FOURTH CENTURY. 7 

we are told of the servants bringing scales to weigh them, 
and notaries crowding round with their tablets and styles 
to record the weight. After the feast came a " hydraulic 
organ," and other instruments of corresponding magnitude, 
to fill the great hall with resounding music, and pantomim- 
ical plays and dances to enliven the dulness of the luxuri- 
ous spectators on their couches — " women with long hair, 
who might have married and given subjects to the state," 
were thus employed, to the indignation of the critic. 

This chronicler of folly and bad manners would not be 
human if he omitted the noble woman of Eome from his 
picture. Her rooms full of obsequious attendants, slaves, 
and eunuchs, half of her time was occupied by the mon- 
strous toilette which annulled all natural charms to give to 
the Society beauty a fictitious and artificial display of red 
and white, of painted eyelids, tortured hair, and extravagant 
dress. An authority still more trenchant .than the heathen 
historian, Jerome, describes even one of the noble ladies 
who headed the Christian society of Eome as spending most 
of the day before the mirror. Like the ladies of Venice in 
a later age, these women, laden with ornaments, attired in 
cloth of gold, and with shoes that crackled under their 
feet with the stiffness of metallic decorations, were almost 
incapacitated from walking, even with the support of their 
attendants ; and a life so accoutred was naturally spent 
in the display of the charms and wealth thus painfully set 
forth. 

The fairer side of the picture, the revolt of the higher 
nature from such a life, brings us into the very heart of 
this society : and nothing can be more curious than the 
gradual penetration of a different and indeed sharply con- 
trary sentiment, the impulse of asceticism and the rudest 
personal self-deprivation, amid a community spoilt by such 
a training, yet not incapable of disgust and impatience with 
the very luxury which had seemed essential to its being. 



8 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

The picturesqueness and attraction of the picture lies here, 
as in so many cases, chiefly on the women's side. 

It is necessary to note, however, the curious mixture 
which existed in this Roman society, where Christianity as 
a system was already strong, and the high officials of the 
Church were beginning to take gradually and by slow 
degrees the places abandoned by the functionaries of the 
empire. Though the hierarchy was already established, 
and the Bishop of Rome had assumed a special importance 
in the Church, Paganism still held in the high places that 
sway of the old economy giving place to the new, which is 
at once so desperate and so nerveless — impotence and 
bitterness mingling with the false tolerance of cynicism. 
The worship of the gods had dropped into a survival of 
certain habits of mind and life, to which some clung with 
the angry revulsion of terror against a new revolutionary 
power at first despised : and some held with the loose grasp 
of an imaginative and poetical system, and some with a 
sense of the intellectual superiority of art and philosophy 
over the arguments and motives that moved the crowd. 
Life had ebbed away from these religions of the past. The 
fictitious attempt of Julian to re-establish the worship of the 
gods, and bring new blood into the exhausted veins of the 
mythological system, had in reality given the last proof of 
its extinction as a power in the world : .but still it remained 
lingering out its last, holding a place, sometimes dignified 
by a gleam of noble manners and the graces of intellectual 
life — and often, it must be allowed, justified by the failure 
of the Church to embody that purity and elevation which its 
doctrines, but scarcely its morals or life, professed. Thus 
the faith in Christ, often real, but very faulty — and the 
faith in Apollo, almost always fictitious, but sometimes 
dignified and superior — existed side by side. The father 
might hold the latter with a superb indifference to its rites, 
and a contemptuous tolerance for its opponents, while the 



I.] ROME IN THE FOURTH CENTURY. 9 

mother held the first with occasional hot impulses of devo- 
tion, and performances of penance for the pardon of those 
worldly amusements and dissipations to which she returned 
with all the more zest when her vigils and prayers were 
over. 

This conjunction of two systems so opposite in every 
impulse, proceeding from foundations so absolutely contrary 
to each other, could not fail to have an extraordinary effect 
upon the minds of the generations moved by it, and affords, 
I think, an explanation of some events very difficult to 
explain on ordinary principles, and particularly the aban- 
donment of what would appear the most unquestionable 
duties, by some of the personages, especially the women 
whose histories and manners fill this chapter of the great 
records of Rome. Some of them deserted their children to 
bury themselves in the deserts, to withdraw to the moun- 
tains, placing leagues of land and sea between themselves 
and their dearest duties — why ? the reader asks. At the 
bidding of a priest, at the selfish impulse of that desire to 
save their own souls, which in our own day at least has 
come to mean a degrading motive — is the general answer. 
It would not be difficult, however, to paint on the other side 
a picture of the struggle with the authorities of her family 
for the training of a son, for the marriage of a daughter, 
from which a woman might shrink with a sense of impo- 
tence, knowing the prestige of the noble guardian against 
whom she would have to contend, and all the forces of 
family pride, of tradition and use and wont, that would be 
arrayed against her. Better perhaps, the mother might 
think, to abandon that warfare, to leave the conflict for 
which she was not strong enough, than to lose the love of 
her child as well, and become to him the emblem of an 
opposing faction attempting to turn him from those delights 
of youth which the hereditary authority of his house encour- 
aged instead of opposing. It is difficult perhaps for the 



10 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

historians to take such motives into consideration, but I 
think the student of human nature may feel them to be 
worth a thought, and receive them as some justification, or 
at least apology, for the actions of some of the Roman 
women who fill the story of the time. 

Unfortunately it is not possible to leave out the Church 
in Koine when we collect the details of depravity and folly 
in Society. One cannot but feel how robust is the faith 
which goes back to these ages for guidance and example 
when one sees the image in St. Jerome's pages of a period so 
early in the history of Christianity. " Could ye not watch 
with me one hour ? " our Lord said to the chosen disciples, 
His nearest friends and followers, in the moment of His 
own exceeding anguish, with a reproach so sorrowful, yet so 
conscious of the weakness of humanity, that it silences 
every excuse. We may say, for a poor four hundred years 
could not the Church keep the impress of His teaching, the 
reality of the faith of those who had themselves fallen and 
fainted, yet found grace to live and die for their Master ? 
But four centuries are a long time, and men are but men 
even with the inheritance of Christians. They belonged to 
their race, their age, and the manifold influences which mod- 
ify in the crowd everything it believes or wishes. And 
they were exposed to many temptations which were doubly 
strong in that world to which by birth and training they be- 
longed. How is an ordinary man to despise wealth in the 
midst of a society corrupted by it, and in which it is su- 
preme ? how learn to be indifferent to rank and prestige in 
a city where without these every other claim was trampled 
under foot ? " The virtues of the primitive Church," says 
Villemain of a still later period, " had been under the guard 
of poverty and persecution : they were weak in success and 
triumph. Enthusiasm became less pure, the rules of life 
less severe. In the always increasing crowd of proselytes 
were many unworthy persons, who turned to Christianity 



i.] ROME IN THE FOURTH CENTURY. 11 

for reasons of ambition and self-interest, to make way at 
Court, to appear faithful to the emperor. The Church, en- 
riched at once by the spoil of the temples and the offerings 
of the Christian crowd, began to clothe itself in profane mag- 
nificence." Those who attained the higher clerical honours 
were sure, according to the evidence of Ammianus, " of 
being enriched by the offerings of the Roman ladies, and 
drove forth like noblemen in lofty chariots, clothed magnifi- 
cently, and sat down at tables worthy of kings." The 
Church, endowed in an earlier period by converts, who of- 
fered sometimes all their living for the sustenance of the 
community which gave them home and refuge, had contin- 
ued to receive the gifts of the pious after the rules of ordi- 
nary life regained their force ; and now when she had yielded 
to a great extent to the prevailing temptations of the age, 
found a large means of endowment in the gifts of deathbed 
repentance and the weakness of dying penitents, of which 
she was reputed to take large advantage: wealth grew 
within her borders, and luxury with it, according to the 
example of surrounding society. It is Jerome himself who 
reports the saying of one of the highest of Boman officials 
to Bishop Damasus. " If you will undertake to make me 
Bishop of Borne, I will be a Christian to-morrow." Not 
even the highest place in the Government was so valuable 
and so great. It is Jerome also who traces for us — the 
fierce indignation of his natural temper, mingling with an 
involuntary perception of the ludicrous side of the picture 
— a popular young priest of his time, whose greatest solici- 
tude was to have perfumed robes, a well fitting shoe, hair 
beautifully curled, and fingers glittering with jewels, and 
who walked on tip-toe lest he should soil his feet. 

" What are these men ? To those who see them pass they are more 
like hridegrooms than priests. Some among them devote their life and 
energies to the single object of knowing the names, the houses, the 
habits, the disposition of all the ladies in Rome. I will sketch for you, 
dear Eustochium, in a few lines, the day's work of one of them, great 



12 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

in the arts of which I speak, that hy means of the master you may the 
more easily recognise his disciples. 

" Our hero rises with the sun : he regulates the order of his visits, 
studies the shortest ways, and arrives before he is wanted, almost be- 
fore his friends are awake. If he perceives anything that strikes his 
fancy, a pretty piece of furniture or an elegant marble, he gazes at it, 
praises it, turns it over in his hands, and grieves that he has not one 
like it — thus extorting rather than obtaining the object of his desires; 
for what woman would not hesitate to offend the universal gossip of 
the town ? Temperance, modesty (castitas), and fasting are his sworn 
enemies. He smells out a feast and loves savoury meats. 

"Wherever one goes one is sure to meet him; he is always there 
before you. He knows all the news, proclaims it in an authoritative 
tone, and is better informed than any one else can be. The horses 
which carry him to the four quarters of Rome in pursuit of this honest 
task are the finest you can see anywhere ; you would say he was the 
brother of that King of Thrace known in story by the speed of his 
coursers. 

"This man," adds the implacable satirist in another letter, "was 
born in the deepest poverty, brought up under the thatch of a peasant's 
cottage, with scarcely enough of black bread and millet to satisfy the 
cravings of his appetite ; yet now he is fastidious and hard to please, 
disdaining honey and the finest flour. An expert in the science of the 
table, he knows every kind of fish by name, and whence come the best 
oysters, and what district produces the birds of finest savour. He 
cares only for what is rare and unwholesome. In another kind of 
vice he is not less remarkable ; his mania is to lie in wait for old men 
and women without children. He besieges their beds when they are 
ill, serves them in the most disgusting offices, more humble and servile 
than any nurse. When the doctor enters he trembles, asking with a 
faltering voice how the patient is, if there is any hope of saving him. 
If there is any hope, if the disease is cured, the priest disappears with 
regrets for his loss of time, cursing the wretched old man who insists 
on living to be as old as Methusalem." 

The last accusation, which, has been the reproach of the 
Church in many different ages, had just been specially con- 
demned by a law of the Emperor Valentinian I., declaring 
null and void all legacies made to priests, a law which called 
forth Jerome's furious denunciation, not of itself, but of the 
abuse which called it forth. This was a graver matter than 
the onslaught upon the curled darlings of the priesthood, 
more like bridegrooms than priests, who carried the news 
from boudoir to boudoir, and laid their entertainers under 
contribution for the bibelots and ancient bric-a-brac which 
their hearts desired. Thus wherever the eye turned there 



I.] 



ROME IN THE FOURTH CENTURY. 



13 



was nothing but luxury and the love of luxury, foolish dis- 
play, extravagance and emulation in all the arts of prodigal- 
ity, a life without gravity, without serious occupation, with 
nothing in it to justify the existence of those human creat- 
ures standing between earth and heaven, and capable of so 
many better things. The revulsion, a revulsion inspired by 
disgust and not without extravagance in its new way, was 
sure to come. 











THE PALATINE, FROM THE AVENTINE. 








THE RIPETTA. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE PALACE ON THE AVENTINE. 



THE strong recoil of human nature from those fatal 
elements which time after time have threatened the 
destruction of all society is one of the noblest things in 
history, as it is one of the most divine in life. There are 
evidences that it exists even in the most wicked individuals, 
and it very evidently comes uppermost in every common- 
wealth from century to century to save again and again 
from utter debasement a community or a nation. When 
depravity becomes the rule instead of the exception, and 
sober principle appears on the point of yielding altogether to 
the whirl of folly or the thirst of self-indulgence, then it 
may always be expected that some ember of divine indigna- 
tion, some thrill of high disgust with the miserable satisfac- 
tions of the world will kindle in one quarter or another and 

14 



ch. ii.] THE PALACE ON THE AVENTINE. 15 

set light to a thousand smouldering tires over all the face of 
the earth. It is one of the highest evidences of that charter 
of our being which is our most precious possession, the reflec- 
tion of that image of God which amid all degradations still 
holds its place in human nature, and will not be destroyed. 
We may mourn indeed that so short a span of centuries had 
so effaced the recollection of the brightest light that ever 
shone among men, as to make the extravagance of a human 
revulsion and revolution necessary in order to preserve and 
restore the better life of Christendom. At the same time 
it is our salvation as a race that such revolutions, however 
imperfect they may be in themselves, are sure to come. 

This revulsion from vice, degradation, and evil of every 
kind, public and personal, had already come with the ut- 
most excess of self-punishment and austerity in the East, 
where already the deserts were mined with caverns and 
holes in the sand, to which hermits and coenobites, the one 
class scarcely less exalted in religious passion and suffering 
than the other, had escaped from the current of evil which 
they did not feel themselves capable of facing, and lived 
and starved and agonised for the salvation of their own souls 
and for a world lying in wickedness. The fame of the 
Thebaid and its saints and martyrs, slowly making itself 
known through the great distances and silences, had already 
breathed over the world, when Athanasius, driven by perse- 
cution from his see and his country, came to Rome, accom- 
panied by two of the monks whose character was scarcely 
understood as yet in the West, and bringing with him his 
own book, the life of St. Antony of the desert, a work which 
had as great an effect in that time as the most popular of 
publications, spread over the world in thousands of copies, 
could have now. It puzzles the modern reader to think 
how a book should thus have moved the world and revolu- 
tionised hundreds of lives, while it existed only in manu- 
script and every example had to be carefully and tediously 



16 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

copied before it could touch, even those who were wealthy- 
enough to secure themselves such a luxury. What readings 
in common, what earnest circles of auditors, what rapt 
intense hanging upon the lips of the reader, there must have 
been before any work, even the most sacred, penetrated to 
the crowd ! — but to us no doubt the process seems more 
slow and difficult than it really was when scribes were to be 
found everywhere, and manuscripts were treated with rev- 
erence and respect. When Athanasius found refuge in 
Rome, which was during the pontificate, or rather — for the 
full papal authority had as yet been claimed by no one — 
the primacy — of Liberius, and about the year 341, he was 
received by all that was best in Rome with great hospitality 
and sympathy. Rome so far as it was Christian was entirely 
orthodox, the Arian heresy having gained no part of the 
Christian society there — and a man of genius and imposing 
character, who brought into that stagnant atmosphere the 
breath of a larger world, who had shared the councils of the 
emperor and lived in the cells of Egypt — an orator, a 
traveller, an exile, with every kind of interest attaching to 
him, was such a visitor as seldom appeared in the city 
deserted by empire. Something like the man who nine 
centuries later went about the Italian streets with the signs 
upon him of one who had been through heaven and hell, 
the Eastern bishop must have appeared to the languid 
citizens, with the brown of the desert still on his cheeks, 
yet something of the air of a courtly prelate, a friend of 
princes ; while his attendants, one with all the wildness of 
a hermit from the desert in his eyes and aspect, in the 
unfamiliar robe and cowl — and the other mild and young 
like the ideal youth, shy and simple as a girl — were won- 
derful apparitions in the fatigued and blase society, which 
longed above everything for something new, something 
real, among all the mocks and shows of their impotent 
life. 



ii.] THE PALACE ON THE AVENTINE. 17 

One of the houses in which Athanasius and his monks 
were most welcome was the palace of a noble widow, 
Albina, who lived the large and luxurious life of her class 
in the perfect freedom of a Eoman matron, Christian, yet 
with no idea in her mind of retirement from the world, or 
renunciation of its pleasures. A woman of a more or less 
instructive mind and lively intelligence, she received with 
the greatest interest and pleasure these strangers who had 
so much to tell, the great bishop flying from his ene- 
mies, the monks from the desert. That she and her circle 
gathered round him with that rapt and flattering attention 
which not the most abstracted saint any more than the 
sternest general can resist, is evident from the story, and it 
throws a gleam of softer light upon the impassioned theo- 
logian who stood fast, "I, Athanasius, against the world" 
for that mysterious splendour of the Trinity, against which 
the heretical East had risen. In the Eoman lady's with- 
drawingroom, in his dark and flowing Eastern robes, we 
find him amid the eager questionings of the women, de- 
scribing to them the strange life of the desert which it was 
such a wonder to hear of — the evensong that rose as from 
every crevice of the earth, while the Egyptian after-glow 
burned in one great circle of colour round the vast globe 
of sky, diffusing an illumination weird and mystic over the 
fantastic rocks and dark openings where the singers lived 
unseen. What a picture to be set before that soft, eager 
circle, half rising from silken couches, clothed with tissues 
of gold, blazing with jewels, their delicate cheeks glow- 
ing in artificial red and white, their crisped and curled 
tresses surmounted by the fantastic towering headdress 
which weighed them down ! 

Among the ladies was the child of the house, the little 
girl who was her mother's excuse for retaining the free- 
dom of her widowhood, Marcella : a thoughtful and pen- 
sive child, devouring all these wonderful tales, listening 



18 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

to everything and laying np a store of silent resolutions 
and fancies in her heart. Her elder sister Asella would 
seem to have already secluded herself in precocious devo- 
tion fuom the family, or at least is not referred to. The 
story which touched the general mind of the time with so 
strange and strong an enthusiasm, fell into the virgin soil 
of this young spirit like the seed of a new life. But the 
little Roman maiden was no ascetic. She had evidently 
no impulse, as some young devotees have had, to set out 
barefoot in search of suffering. When Athanasius left 
Rome, he left in the house which had received him so 
kindly his life of St. Antony, the first copy which had been 
seen in the Western world. This manuscript, written per- 
haps by the hand of one of those wonderful monks, the 
strangest figures in her luxurious world whom Marcella 
knew, became the treasure of her youth. Such a pres- 
ent, at such a time, was enough to occupy the visionary 
silence of a girl's life, often so full of dreams unknown 
and unsearchable even to her nearest surroundings. She 
went through however the usual routine of a young lady's 
life in Rome. Madame Albina the mother, though full of 
interest and curiosity in respect to all things intellectual 
and Christian, held still more dearly a mother's natural 
desire to see her only remaining child nobly married and 
established in the splendour and eminence to which she 
was born. We are told that Marcella grew up to be one 
of the beauties of Rome, but as this is an inalienable quali- 
fication of all these beautiful souls, it is not necessary to 
believe that the " insignem decorem corporis " meant any 
extraordinary distinction. She carried out at all events 
her natural fate and married a rich and noble husband, of 
whom however we know no details, except that he died 
some months after, leaving her without child or tie to the 
ordinary life of the world, in all the freedom of widow- 
hood, at a very early age. 



ii.] THE PALACE ON THE AVENTINE. 19 

Thus placed in full command of her fate, she never seems 
to have hesitated as to what she should do with herself. 
She was, as a matter of course, assailed by many new suit- 
ors, among whom her historian, who is no other than St. 
Jerome himself, makes special mention of the exceptionally 
wealthy Cerealis ("whose name is great among the con- 
suls "), and who was so splendid a suitor that the fact that 
he was old scarcely seems to have told against him. Mar- 
cella's refusal of this great match and of all the others 
offered to her, offended and alienated her friends and even 
her mother, and there followed a moment of pain and per- 
plexity in her life. She is said to have made a sacrifice of 
a part of her possessions to relatives to whom, failing her- 
self, it fell to keep up the continuance of the family name, 
hoping thus to secure their tolerance. And she acquired 
the reputation of an eccentric, and probably of aposeuse, so 
general in all times when a young woman forsakes the 
beaten way, as she had done by giving up the ridiculous 
fashions and toilettes of the time, putting aside the rouge 
and antimony, the disabling splendour of cloth of gold, 
and assuming a simple dress of a dark colour, a thing which 
shocked her generation profoundly. The gossip rose and 
flew from mouth to mouth among the marble salons where 
the Eoman ladies languished for a new subject, or in the 
ante-rooms, where young priests and deacons awaited or 
forestalled the awakening of their patronesses. It might 
be the Hotel Rambouillet of which we are reading, and a 
fine lady taking refuge at Port Royal who was being dis- 
cussed and torn to pieces in those antique palaces. What 
was the meaning that lay beneath that brown gown ? Was 
it some unavowed disappointment, or, more exciting still, 
some secret intrigue, some low-placed love which she dared 
not acknowledge ? Withdrawn into a villa had she, into 
the solitude of a suburban garden, hid from every eye ? and 
who then was the companion of Marcella's solitude ? The 



20 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

ladies who discussed her had small faith in austerities, nor 
in the desire of a young and attractive woman to live alto- 
gether alone. 

It is very likely that Marcella herself, as well as her 
critics, soon began to feel that the mock desert into which 
she had made the gardens of her villa was indeed a ficti- 
tious way of living the holy life, and the calumny was more 
ready and likely to take hold of this artificial retirement, 
than of a course of existence led within sight of the world. 
She finally took a wiser and more reasonable way. Her 
natural home was a palace upon the Aventine to which she 
returned, consecrating a portion of it to pious uses, a chapel 
for common worship and much accommodation for the 
friends of similar views and purposes who immediately be- 
gan to gather about her. It is evident that there were 
already many of these women in the best society of Rome. 
A lively sentiment of feminine society, of the multiplied 
and endless talks, consultations, speculations, of a commu- 
nity of women, open to every pleasant curiosity and quick 
to every new interest, rises immediately before us in that 
first settlement of monasticism — or, as the ecclesiastical 
historians call it, the first convent of Rome, before our 
eyes. It was not a convent after all so much as a large and 
hospitable feminine house, possessing the great luxury of 
beautiful rooms and furniture, and the liberal ways of a 
large and wealthy family, with everything that was most 
elegant, most cultured, most elevated, as well as most 
devout and pious. The " Souls," to use our own jargon of 
the moment, would seem indeed to have been more truly 
represented there than the Sisters of our modern under- 
standing, though we may acknowledge that there are few 
communities of Sisters in which this element does not more 
or less flourish. Christian ladies who were touched like 
herself with the desire of a truer and purer life, gathered 
about her, as did the French ladies about Port Royal, and 



ii.] THE PALACE ON" THE AVENTINE. 21 

women of the same class everywhere, wherever a woman 
of influential character leads the way. 

The character and position of these ladies was not perhaps 
so much different as we might suppose from those of the 
court of Louis XIV. or any other historical period in which 
great luxuries and much dissipation had sickened the heart 
of all that was good and noble. Yet there were very special 
characteristics in their lot. Some of them were the wives 
of pagan officials of the empire, holding a sometimes devious 
and always agitated course through the troubles of a divided 
household : and there were many young widows perplexed 
with projects of remarriage, of whom some would be tempted 
by the prospects of a triumphant re-entry into the full en- 
joyments of life, although a larger number were probably 
resistant and alarmed, anxious to retain their freedom, or to 
devote themselves as Marcella had clone to a higher life. 
Women of fashion not unwilling to add a devotion a la mode 
to their other distractions, women of intellectual aspirations, 
lovers of the higher education, seekers after a society alto- 
gether brilliant and new, without any special emotions of 
religious feeling, no doubt filled up the ranks. "A society," 
says Thierry, in his Life of Jerome, " of rich and influential 
women, belonging for the great part to patrician families, 
thus organised itself, and the oratory on the Aventine 
became a seat of lay influence and power which the clergy 
themselves were soon compelled to reckon with." 

The heads of the community bore the noblest names in 
Eome, which however at that period of universal deterioration 
was not always a guarantee of noble birth, since the great- 
est names were sometimes assumed with the slenderest of 
claims to their honours. Marcella's sister, Asella, older than 
the rest, and a sort of mother among them, had for a long 
time before " lived the life " in obscurity and humbleness, 
and several others not remarkable in the record, were promi- 
nent associates. The actual members of the community, 



22 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

however, are not so much remarked or dwelt upon as the 
visitors who came and went, not all of them of consistent 
religious character, ladies of the great world. One of these, 
Fabiola, affords an amusing episode in the graver tale, the 
contrast of a butterfly of society, a grande dame of fascinating 
manners, airs, and graces, unfortunate in her husbands, of 
whom she had two, one of them divorced — and not quite 
unwilling to divorce the second and try her luck again. 
Another, one of the most important of all in family and 
pretensions, and by far the most important in history of 
these constant visitors, was Paula, a descendant (collateral, 
the link being of the lightest and easiest kind, as was char- 
acteristic of the time) of the great iEmilius Paulus, the 
daughter of a distinguished Greek who claimed to be de- 
scended from Agamemnon, and widow of another who 
claimed iEneas as his ancestor. These large claims apart, 
she was certainly a great lady in every sense of the word, 
delicate, luxurious, following all the fashions of the time. 
She too was a widow, with a family of young daughters, in 
that enviable state of freedom which the Eoman ladies give 
every sign of having used and enjoyed to the utmost, the 
only condition in which they were quite at liberty to regu- 
late their own fate. Paula is the most interesting of the 
community, as she is the one of whom we know the most. 
No fine lady more exquisite, more fastidious, more splendid 
than she. Not even her Christianity had beguiled her from 
the superlative finery of her Roman habits. She was one 
of the fine ladies who could not walk abroad without the 
support of her servants, nor scarcely cross the marble floor 
from one silken couch to another without tottering, as well 
she might, under the weight of the heavy tissues interwoven 
with gold, of which her robes were made. A widow at 
thirty-five, she was still in full possession of the charms of 
womanhood, and the sunshine of life (though we are told 
that her grief for her husband was profound and sincere) 



ii.] THE PALACE ON" THE AVENTINE. 23 

— with her young daughters growing up round her, more 
like her sisters than her children, and sharing every thought. 
Blsesilla, the eldest, a widow at twenty, was, like her 
mother, a Roman exquisite, loving everything that was beau- 
tiful and soft and luxurious. In the affectionate gibes of 
the family she is described as spending entire days before 
her mirror, giving herself up to all the extravagances of dress 
and personal decoration, the tower of curls upon her head, 
the touch of rouge on her cheeks. A second daughter, Pau- 
lina, was on the eve of marriage with a young patrician, as 
noble, as rich, and, as was afterwards proved, as devoutly 
Christian as the family into which he married. The third 
member of the family, Eustochium, a girl of sixteen, of a 
character contrasting strongly with those of her beautiful 
mother and sister, a saint from her birth, was the favourite, 
and almost the child, of Marcella, instructed by her from 
her earliest years, and had already fixed her choice upon a 
monastic life, and would seem to have been a resident in 
the Aventine palace to which the others were such frequent 
visitors. Of all this delightful and brilliant party she is the 
one born recluse, severe in youthful virtue, untouched by 
any of the fascinations of the world. The following very 
pretty and graphic story is told of her, in which we have 
a curious glimpse into the strangely mixed society of the 
time. 

The family of Paula though Christian, and full of relig- 
ious fervour, or at least imbued with the new spirit of revolt 
against the corruption of the time, was closely connected 
with the still existing pagan society of Rome. Her sister- 
in-law, sister of her husband and aunt of her children, was 
a certain lady named Prsetextata, the wife of Hymettius, a 
high official under the Emperor Julian the Apostate, both 
of them belonging, with something of the fictitious enthu- 
siasm of their master, to the faith of the old gods. No 
doubt one of the severest critics of that society on the 



24 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

Aventine, Prsetextata saw with impatience and wrath, what 
no doubt she considered the artificial gravity, inspired by 
her surroundings, of the young niece who had already an- 
nounced her intention never to marry, and to withdraw 
altogether from the world. Such resolutions on the part of 
girls who know nothing of the world they abandon have 
exasperated the most devout of parents, and it was not 
wonderful if this pagan lady thought it preposterous. The 
little plot which she formed against the serious girl was, 
however, of the most good-natured and innocent kind. 
Finding that words had no effect upon her, the elder lady 
invited Eustochium to her house on a visit. The young 
vestal came all unsuspicious in her little brown gown, the 
costume of humility, but had scarcely entered her aunt's 
house when she was seized by the caressing and flattering 
hands of the attendants, interested in the plot as the favour- 
ite maids of such an establishment would be, who unloosed 
her long hair and twisted it into curls and plaits, took away 
her humble dress, clothed her in silk and cloth of gold, 
covered her with ornaments and led her before the mirror 
which reflected all these charms, to dazzle her eyes with the 
apparition of herself, so different from the schoolroom figure 
with which she was acquainted. The little plot was clever 
as well as innocent, and might, no doubt, have made a heart 
of sixteen beat high. But Eustochium with her Greek 
name, and her virgin heart, was the grave girl we all know, 
the one here and there among the garden of girls, born to 
a natural seriousness which is beyond such temptations. 
She let them turn her round and round, received sweetly 
in her gentle calm the applauses of the collected household, 
looked at her image in the mirror as at a picture — and 
went home again in her little brown gown with her story 
to tell, which, no doubt, was an endless amusement and 
triumph to the ladies on the Aventine, repeated to every 
new-comer with many a laugh at the foolishness of the 



ii.] THE PALACE ON THE AVENTINE. 25 

clever aunt who had hoped by such means to seduce Eu- 
stochium — Eustochium, the most serious of them all ! 

Such was the first religious community in Rome. It was 
the natural home of Marcella to which her friends gathered, 
without in most cases deserting their own palaces, or for- 
saking their own place in the world — a centre and home 
of the heart, where they met constantly, the residents ever 
ready to receive, not only their closer associates, but all the 
society of Roman ladies, who might be attracted by the 
higher aspirations of intellect and piety. Not a stone exists 
of that noble mansion now, but it is supposed to have stood 
close to the existing church of Sta. Sabina, an unrivalled 
mount of vision. Erom that mount now covered with so 
many ruins the ladies looked out upon the yet unbroken 
splendour of the city, Tiber far below sweeping round under 
the walls. Palatinus, with the " white roofs " of that home 
to which Horatius looked before he plunged into the yellow 
river, still stood intact at their right hand : and, older far, 
and longer surviving, the wealth of nature, the glory of the 
Eoman sky and air, the white-blossomed daphne and the 
starry myrtle, and those roses which are as ancient inhabi- 
tants of the world as any we know flinging their glories 
about the marble balustrades and making the terraces sweet. 
There would they walk and talk, the recluses at ease and 
simple in their brown gowns, the great ladies uneasy under 
the weight of their toilettes, but all eager to hear, to tell, 
to read the last letter from the East, from the desert or the 
cloister, to exchange their experiences and plan their chari- 
ties. There is nothing ascetic in the picture, which is a very 
different one from that of those austere solitudes of the des- 
ert, which had suggested and inspired it — the lady Paula 
tottering in, with a servant on either side to conduct her to 
the nearest couch, and young Blsesilla making a brilliant 
irruption in all her bravery, with her jewels sparkling and 
her transparent veil floating, and her golden heels tapping 



26 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

upon the marble floor. This is not how we understand the 
atmosphere of a convent ; yet, if fact were taken into due 
consideration, the greatest convents have been very like it, 
in all ages — the finest ladies having always loved that in- 
tercourse and contrast, half envious of the peace of their 
cloistered sisters, half pleased to dazzle them with a splen- 
dour which never could be theirs. 

"No fixed rule," says Thierry, in his Life of St. Jerome, "existed 
in this assembly, where there was so much individuality, and where 
monastic life was not even attempted. They read the Holy Scriptures 
together, sang psalms, organised good works, discussed the condition 
of the Church, the progress of spiritual life in Italy and in the prov- 
inces, and kept up a correspondence with the brothers and sisters out- 
side of a more strictly monastic character. Those of the associates who 
carried on the ordinary life of the world came from time to time to 
refresh their spirits in these holy meetings, then returned to their fam- 
ilies. Those who were free gave themselves up to devotional exercises, 
according to their taste and inclination, and Marcella retired into her 
desert. In a short time these exercises were varied by the pursuit of 
knowledge. All Roman ladies of rank knew a little Greek, if only to 
be able to say to their favourites, according to the mot of Juvenal, re- 
peated by a father of the Church, Zwtj kcu ipvxy, my life and my soul : 
the Christian ladies studied it better and with a higher motive. Several 
later versions of the Old and New Testament were in general circu- 
lation in Italy, differing considerably from each other, and this very 
difference interested anxious minds in referring to the original Greek 
for the Gospels, and for the Hebrew books to the Greek of the Septua- 
gint, the favourite guide of "Western translators. The Christian ladies 
accordingly set themselves to perfect their knowledge of Greek, and 
many, among whom were Marcella and Paula, added the Hebrew lan- 
guage, in order that they might sing the psalms in the very words of 
the prophet-king. Marcella even became, by intelligent comparison 
of the texts, so strong in exegetical knowledge that she was often con- 
sulted by the priests themselves." 

It was about the year 380 that this establishment was 
formed. " The desert of Marcella " above referred to was, 
as the reader will remember, a great garden in a suburb of 
Rome, which she had pleased herself by allowing to run 
wild, and where occasionally this great Soman lady played 
at a hermit's life in solitude and abstinence. Paula's desert, 
perhaps not so easy a one, was in her own house, where, 
besides the three daughters already mentioned, she had a 



II.] 



THE PALACE ON THE AVENTINE. 



27 



younger girl Rufina, not yet of an age to show any marked 
tendencies, and a small boy Toxotius, her only son, who was 
jealously looked after by his pagan relatives, to keep him 
from being swept away by this tide of Christianity. 

Such was the condition of the circle on the Aventine, 
when a great event happened in Borne. Following many 
struggles and disasters in the East, chiefly the continually 
recurring misfortune of a breach of unity, a diocese here 




ON THE PALATINE. 



and there exhibiting its freedom by choosing two bishops 
representing different parties at the same time, and thus 
calling for the exercise of some central authority — Pope 
Damasus had called a council in Eome. He was so well 
qualified to be a judge in such cases that he had himself won 
his see at the point of the sword, after a stoutly contested 
fight in which much blood was shed, and the church of S. 
Lorenzo, the scene of the struggle, was besieged and taken 
like a castle. If he had hoped by this means to establish 



28 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [ch. n. 

the universal authority of his see, a pretension as yet un- 
developed, it was immediately forestalled by the Bishop 
of Constantinople, who at once called together a rival coun- 
cil in that place. The Council of Rome, however, is of so 
much more importance to us that it called into full light 
in the Western world the great and remarkable figure of 
Jerome : and still more to our record of the Roman ladies 
of the Aventine, since it suddenly introduced to them the 
man whose name is for ever connected with theirs, who is 
supposed erroneously, as the reader will see, to have been 
the founder of their community, but who henceforward 
became its most trusted leader and guide in the spiritual 
life. 




-■s&.-eUMs £. SVSr«^ 



THE WALLS BY ST. JOHN LATERAN. 



CHAPTER III. 



MELANIA. 



IT may be well, however, before continuing this narrative 
to tell the story of another Roman lady, not of their band, 
nor in any harmony with them, which had already echoed 
through the Christian world, a wild romance of enthusiasm 
and adventure in which the breach of all the decorums of 
life was no less remarkable than the abandonment of its 
duties. Some ten years before the formation of Marcella's 
religious household (the dates are of the last uncertainty) a 
young lady of Rome, of Spanish origin, rich and noble and 
of the highest existing rank, found herself suddenly left in 
the beginning of a splendid and happy life, in desolation 
and bereavement. Her husband, whose name is unrecorded, 
died early leaving her with three little children, and shortly 

29 



30 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

after, while yet imrecovered from this crushing blow, an- 
other came upon her in the death of her two eldest children, 
one following the other. The young woman, only twenty- 
three, thus terribly stricken, seems to have been roused into 
a fever of excitement and passion by a series of disasters 
enough to crush any spirit. It is recorded of her that she 
neither wept nor tore her hair, but advancing towards the 
crucifix with her arms extended, her head high, her eyes 
tearlesSj and something like a smile upon her lips, thanked 
God who had now delivered her from all ties and left her 
free to serve Himself. "Whether she had previously enter- 
tained this desire, or whether it was only the despair of the 
distracted mother which expressed itself in such words, we 
are not told. In the haste and restlessness of her anguish 
she arranged everything for a great funeral, and placing the 
three corpses on one bier followed, them to Rome to the 
family mausoleum alone, holding her infant son, the only 
thing left to her, in her arms. The populace of Rome, eager 
for any public show, had crowded upon the course of many 
a triumph, and watched many a high-placed Csesar return 
in victory to the applauding city, but never had seen such a 
triumphal procession as this, Death the Conqueror leading 
his captives. We are not told whether it was attended by 
the overflowing charities, extravagant doles and offerings to 
the poor with which other mourners attempted to assuage 
their grief, or whether Melania's splendour and solitude of 
mourning was unsoftened by any ministrations of charity ; 
but the latter is more in accordance with the extraordinary 
fury and passion of grief, as of a woman injured and out- 
raged by heaven to which she thus called the attention of 
the spheres. 

The impression made by that funeral splendour and by 
the sight of the young woman following tearless and de- 
spairing with her one remaining infant in her arms, had 
not faded from the minds of the spectators when it was 



in.] MELANIA. 31 

rumoured through Koine that Melania had abandoned her 
one remaining tie to life and gone forth into the outside 
world no one knew where, leaving her child so entirely with- 
out any arrangement for its welfare that the official charged 
with the care of orphans had to select a guardian for this 
son of senators and consuls as if he had been a nameless 
foundling. What bitterness of soul lay underneath such 
an incomprehensible desertion, who could say ? It might 
be a sense of doom such as overwhelms some sensitive minds, 
as if everything belonging to them were fated and nothing- 
left them but the tragic expedient of Hagar in the desert, 
" Let me not see the child die." Perhaps the courage of 
the heartbroken young woman sank before the struggle with 
pagan relations, who would leave no stone unturned to bring 
up this last scion of the family in the faith or no-faith of 
his ancestors ; perhaps she was in reality devoid of those 
maternal instincts which make the child set upon the knee 
the best comforter of the woman to whom they have 
brought home her warrior dead. This was the explanation 
given by the world which tore the unhappy Melania to 
pieces and held her up to universal indignation. Not even 
the Christians already touched with the enthusiasm and 
passion of the pilgrim and ascetic could justify the sudden 
and mysterious disappearance of a woman who still had so 
strong a natural bond to keep her in her home. But what- 
ever the character of Melania might be, whether destitute 
of tenderness, or only distracted by grief and bereavement, 
and hastening to take her fatal shadow away from the 
cradle of her child, she was at least invulnerable to any 
argument or persuasion. " God will take care of him better 
than I can," she said as she left the infant to his fate. It 
was probably a better one than had he been the charge of 
this apparently friendless young woman, with her pagan 
relations, her uncompromising enthusiasm and self-will, and 
with all the risks surrounding her feet which made the 



32 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

path of a young widow in Rome so full of danger ; but it is 
fortunate for the world that few mothers are capable of 
counting those risks or of turning their backs upon a duty 
which is usually their best consolation. 

There is, however, an interest in the character and pro- 
ceedings of such an exceptional woman which has always 
excited the world, and which the thoughtful spectator will 
scarcely dismiss with the common imputation of simple 
heartlessness and want of feeling. Melania was a proud 
patrician notwithstanding that she flung from her every 
trace of earthly rank or wealth, and a high-spirited, high- 
tempered individual notwithstanding her subsequent plunge 
into the most self-abasing ministrations of charity. And 
these features of character were not altered by her sudden 
renunciation of all things. She went forth a masterful 
personage determined, though no doubt unconsciously, to 
sway all circumstances to her will, though in the utmost 
self-denial and with all the appearances and surroundings 
of humility. This is a paradox which meets us on every 
side, in the records of such world-abandonment as are 
familiar in every history of the beginnings of the monastic 
system, in which continually both men and women give 
up all things while giving up nothing, and carry their indi- 
vidual will and way through circumstances which seem to 
preclude the exercise of either. 

The disappearance of Melania made a great sensation in 
Rome, and no doubt discouraged Christian zeal and woke 
doubts in many minds even while proving to others the 
height of sacrifice which could be made for the faith. On 
the other hand the adversary had boundless occasion to blas- 
pheme and denounce the doctrines which, as he had some 
warrant for saying, thus struck at the very basis of society 
and weakened every bond of nature. What more dreadful 
influence could be than one which made a woman forsake 
her child, the infant whom she had carried in her arms to 



in.] MELANIA. 33 

the great funeral, in the sight of all Ronie, the son of her sor- 
row? Nobody except a hot-headed enthusiast could take 
her part even among her fellow-Christians, nor does it 
appear that she sought any support or made any apology 
for herself. Jerome, then a young student and scholar from 
the East, was in Rome, in obscurity, still a catechumen pre- 
paring for his baptism, at the time of Melania's flight ; and 
though there is no proof that he was even known to her, and 
no probability that so unknown a person could have anything 
to do with her resolution, or could have influenced her mind, 
it was suggested in later times when he was well known, 
that probably he had much to do — who can tell if not the 
most powerful and guilty of motives ? — in determining her 
flight. Such a vulgar explanation is always adapted to the 
humour of the crowd, and gives an easy solution of the prob- 
lems which are otherwise so difficult to solve. As a matter 
of fact these two personages, not unlike each other in force 
and spirit, had much to do with each other, though mostly 
in a hostile sense, in the after part of their life. 

We find Melania again in Egypt, to which presumably 
she at once directed her flight as the headquarters of austere 
devotion and self-sacrifice, on leaving Rome — alone so far 
as appears. This was in the year 372 (nothing can be more 
delightful than to encounter from time to time a date, like 
an angel, in the vague wilderness of letters and narratives), 
when Athanasius the great Bishop was near his end. The 
young fugitive, whose arrival in Alexandria would not be 
attended by such mystery as shrouded her departure from 
Rome, was received kindly by the dying saint, to whom she 
had probably been known in her better days, and who in 
his enthusiasm for the life of monastic privation and sacri- 
fice probably considered her flight and her resolution alike 
inspired by heaven. He gave her, let us hope, his blessing, 
and much good counsel — in addition to the sacred sheep- 
skin which had formed the sole garment of the holy Maca- 



34 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME, [chap. 

rius in his cell in the desert, which she carried away with 
her as her most valued possession. The great Roman lady 
then pursued her way into the wilderness, which was indeed 
a wilderness rather in name than in fact, being peopled on 
every side by communities both of men and women, while 
in every rocky fissure and cavern were hermits jealously 
shut each in his hole, the more inaccessible the better. 
Nothing can be more contradictory than the terms used. 
This desert of solitaries gave forth the evening hymn over 
all its extent as if the very sands and rocks sang, so many 
were the unseen worshippers. And the traveller went into 
the wilderness alone so to speak, in the utmost self-abnega- 
tion and humility, yet attended by an endless retinue of 
servants whose attendance was indispensable, if only to 
convey and protect the store of provisions and presents 
which she carried with her. 

The conception of a lonely figure on the edge of a track- 
less sandy waste facing all perils, and encountering perhaps 
after toilsome days of solitude a still more lonely anchorite 
in his cell, to give her the hospitality of a handful of peas, 
and a shrine of prayer, which is the natural picture which 
rises before us — changes greatly when the details are exam- 
ined. Melania evidently travelled with a great caravanserai, 
with camels laden with grain and every kind of provision 
that was necessary to sustain life in those regions. The 
times were more troublous even than usual. The death of 
Athanasius was the signal for one of those outbursts of per- 
secution which rent the Christian world in its very earliest 
ages, and which alas ! the Church herself has never been 
slow to learn the use of. The underground or overground 
population of the Egyptian desert was orthodox ; the powers 
that were, were Arian ; and hermits and ccenobites alike were 
hunted out of their refuges and dragged before tribunals, 
where their case was decided before it was heard and every 
ferocity used against them. In a country so rent by the 



in.] MELANIA. 35 

most violent of agitations Melania passed like an angel of 
charity. She became the providence of the hunted and suf- 
fering monks. She is said for a short period to have pro- 
vided for five thousand in Nitria, which proves that however 
secret her disappearance from Ronie had been, her address 
as we should say must have been well known to her bankers, 
or their equivalent. Thus it is evident that a robe of sack- 
cloth need not necessarily imply poverty, much less humil- 
ity, and that a woman may ride about on the most sorry 
horse (chosen it would seem because it was a more abject 
thing than the well-conditioned ass of the East) and yet 
demean herself like a princess. 

There is one story told of this primitive Lady Bountiful 
by Palladius whjch if it did not recall the action of St. Paul 
in somewhat similar circumstances would be highly pictu- 
resque. The proconsul in Palestine, not at all aware who 
was the pestilent woman who persisted in supplying and 
defending the population of the religious which it was his 
mission to get rid of — even going so far as to visit and 
nourish them in his prisons — had her arrested to answer 
for her interference. There is nothing more likely than 
that Melania remembered the method adopted by St. Paul 
to bring his judges to his feet. She sent the consul a mes- 
sage in which a certain compassionate scorn mingles with 
pride. " You esteem me by my present dress," she said, 
"which it is quite in my power to change when I will. 
Take care lest you bring yourself into trouble by what you 
do in your ignorance." This incident happened at Csesarea, 
the great city on the Mediterranean shore which Herod had 
built, and where the prodigious ruins still lie in sombre 
grandeur capable of restoration to the uses of life. The 
governor of the Syrian city trembled in his gilded chair. 
The names which Melania quoted were enough to unseat 
him half a dozen times over, though, truth to tell, they are 
not very clearly revealed to the distant student. He hast- 



36 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

ened to set free the sunburnt pilgrim in her brown gown, 
and leaye her to her own devices. " One must answer a 
fool according to his folly," she said disdainfully, as she 
accepted her freedom. This lady's progress through the 
haunted deserts, her entrance into town after town, with the 
shield of rank ready for use in any emergency, attended by 
continual supplies from the stewards of her estates, and the 
power of shedding abundance round her wherever she went, 
could hardly be said to merit the rewards of privation and 
austerity even if her delicate feet were encased in rude san- 
dals and the cloth of gold replaced by a tunic of rough wool. 
Melania had been, presumably for some time before this 
incident, accompanied by a priest named Hufinus, a fellow- 
countryman, schoolfellow and dear friend of Jerome, the 
future Father of the Church, at this period a young relig- 
ious adventurer if we may use the word : — which indeed 
seems the only description applicable to the bands of young, 
devout enthusiasts, who roamed about the world, not bound 
to any special duties, supporting themselves one knows not 
how, aiming at one knows not what, except some devotion 
of mystical religious life, or indefinite Christian service to 
the world. The object of saving their souls was perhaps 
for most the prevailing object, and the greater part of them 
had at least passed a year or two in those Eastern deserts 
where renunciation of the world had been pushed to its 
furthest possibilities. But they weije also hungry for learn- 
ing, for knowledge, for disciples, and full of that activity of 
youth which is bound to go everywhere and see everything 
whether with possible means and motives or not. What- 
ever they were, they were not so far as can be made out 
missionaries in any sense of the word. They were received 
wherever they went, in devout households here and there, 
in any of the early essays at monasteries which existed by 
bounty and Christian charity, among the abounding depend- 
ents of great houses, or by the bishop or other ecclesiastical 







^9 M 



" ill. , , =- =tj 






in.] MELANIA. 39 

functionary. They were this man's secretary, that man's 
tutor — seldom so far as we can see were they employed as 
chaplains. Rufmus indeed was a priest, but few of the 
others were so, Jerome himself only having consented to be 
ordained from courtesy, and in no way fulfilling the duties 
of the priesthood. There were, however, many offices no 
doubt appropriate to them in the household of a bishop, 
who was often the distributor of great charities and the 
administrator of great possessions. But it is evident that 
there were always a number of these scholar-student monks 
available to join any travelling party, to serve their patron 
with their knowledge of the desert and their general experi- 
ence of the ways of the world. " To lead about a sister " : 
— St. Paul perhaps had already in his time some knowledge 
of the usefulness of such a functionary, and of the perfectly 
legitimate character of his office. Rufmus joined Melania in 
this way, to all appearance as the other head of the expedi- 
tion, on perfectly equal terms, though it was her purse 
which supplied everything necessary. Jerome himself 
(with a train of brethren behind him) travelled in the 
same way with Paula — Oceanus with Fabiola. Nothing 
could be more completely in accordance with the fashion 
of the time. Perhaps the young men provided for their 
own expenses as we say, but the caravan was the lady's 
and all the immense and indiscriminate charity which 
flowed from it. 

It is not necessary for us to follow the career of Rufmus 
any more than we intend to follow that of Jerome, into the 
violent controversy which is the chief link which connects 
their names, or indeed in any way except that of their associ- 
ation with the women of our tale. Rufimis was a Dalmatian 
from the shores of the Adriatic, learned enough according 
to the fashion of his time, though not such a scholar as Je- 
rome, and apt to despise those elegances of literature which 
he was incapable of appreciating. He too, no doubt, like 



40 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

Jerome, had some following of other men like himself, ready 
for any adventure, and glad to make themselves the almon- 
ers of Melania and form a portion of her train. It is a 
strange conjunction according to our modern ideas, and no 
doubt there were vague and flying slanders, such as exist 
in all ages, accounting for anything that is unusual or myste- 
rious by the worse reasons. But it must be remembered that 
such partnerships were habitual in those days, permitted by 
the usage of a time of which absolute purity was the craze 
and monomania, if we may so speak, as well as the ideal : 
and also that the solitude of those pilgrims was at all times 
that of a crowd — the supposed fugitive flying forth alone 
being in reality, as has been explained already, accompanied 
on every stage of the way by attendants enough to fill her 
ship and form her caravan wherever she went. 

From Csesarea, where Melania discomfited the govern- 
ment by her high rank and connections, it is but a little way 
to Jerusalem, where the steps of the party were directed 
after their prolonged journey through the desert. It had 
already become the end of many pilgrimages, the one place 
in the world which most attracted the hearts and imagina- 
tions of the devout throughout all the world ; and we can 
well realise the sensation of the wanderers when they came 
in sight of that green hill, dominating the scene of so many 
tragedies, the still half-ruined but immortal city of which 
the very dust was dear to the primitive Christians. Who 
that has come suddenly upon that scene in quiet, without 
offensive guidance or ciceroneship, has not named to himself 
the Mount of Olives with such a thrill of identification as 
would move him in scarcely any other landscape in the 
world ? It was still comparatively virgin soil in the end of 
the fourth century. The Empress Helena had been there, 
making,, as we all feel now, but too easy and too exact dis- 
coveries : but the country was unexplored by any vain search- 
ings of curiosity, and the calm of solitude, as perfect and 



in.] MELANIA. 41 

far sweeter than amid the sands of the deserts, was still 
to be found there. The pilgrims went no further. They 
chose each their site upon the soft slope of that hill of di- 
vine memories. Rufinus took up his abode in a rocky cell, 
Melania probably in some house in the city, while their 
monasteries were being built. The great Roman lady with 
her faithful stewards, always sending those ever valuable 
supplies, no doubt provided for the expenses of both : and 
soon two communities arose near each other preserving the 
fellowship of their founders, where after some years of 
travel and movement Melania, with strength and courage 
restored, took up her permanent abode. 

It is difficult to decide what is meant by sacrifice and 
self-abnegation in this world of human subterfuge and self- 
deception. It is very likely that Melania, like Paula after 
her, gave herself to the most humble menial offices, and did 
not scorn, great lady as she was, to bow the haughty head 
which had made the proconsul of Palestine tremble, to the 
modest necessities of primitive life. Perhaps she cooked 
the spare food, swept the bare cells with her own hands : 
undoubtedly she would superintend the flocks and herds and 
meagre fields which kept her community supplied. We 
know that she rode the sorriest horse, and wore the rough- 
est gown. These things rank high in the catalogue of pri- 
vations, as privations are calculated in the histories of the 
saints. And yet it is doubtful how far she is to be credited, 
if it were a merit, with any self-sacrifice. She had attained 
the full gratification of her own will and way, which is an 
advantage not easily or often computed. She had settled 
herself in the most interesting spot in the world, in the 
midst of a landscape which, notwithstanding all natural 
aridity and the depressing effects of ruin everywhere, is yet 
full of beauty as well as interest. Most of all perhaps she 
was in the way of the very best of company, receiving pil- 
grims of the highest eminence, bishops, scholars, princes, 



42 



THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [en. in. 



sometimes ladies of rank like herself, who were continually 
coming and going, bringing the great news of the world from 
every quarter to the recluses who thus commanded every- 
thing that wealth could supply. One may be sure that, as 
Jerome and Paula afterwards spent many a serene evening 
in Bethlehem under their trees, Melania and Rufinus would 
often sit under those hoary olives doubly grey with age, 
talking of all things in heaven and earth, looking across the 
little valley to the wall, all the more picturesque that it was 
broken, and lay here and there in heaps of ruin, of Jerusalem, 
and hearing, in the pauses of their conversation, the tinkling 
of that little brook which has seen so many sacred scenes and 
over which our Lord and His favourite disciples crossed to 
Gethsemane, on such a night as that on which His servants 
sat and talked of Him. It is true that the accursed Arians, 
and grave news of the fight going on between them and the 
Catholics, or perhaps the question of Origen's orthodoxy, or 
how the struggle was going between Paulinus and Meletius 
at Antioch, might occupy them more than those sacred 
memories. But it is much to be doubted whether any 
grandeur of Eoman living would have been so much to 
Melania's mind as the convent on the Mount of Olives, the 
stream of distinguished pilgrims, and the society of her ever 
devoted companion and friend. 




THE TEMPLE OP VESTA. 







Js ,.'^v, 




CHURCHES ON THE AVENTINE. 



r 






CHAPTER IV. 



THE SOCIETY OF MARCELLA. 



THE council which was held in Rome in 382 with the 
intention of deciding the cases of various contending 
bishops in distant sees, especially in Antioch where two had 
been elected for the same seat — a council scarcely acknowl- 
edged even by those on whose behalf it was held, and not at 
all 1 by those opposed to them — was chiefly remarkable, as 
we have said, from the appearance for the first time, as a 
marked and notable personage, of one of the most important, 
picturesque, and influential figures of his time — Jerome : a 
scholar insatiable in intellectual zeal, who had sought every- 
where the best schools of the time and was learned in all 
their science: and at the same time a monk and ascetic 
fresh from the austerities of the desert and one of those 
struggles with the flesh and the imagination which formed 
the epic of the solitary. It was not unnatural that the 
regime of extreme abstinence combined with utter want of 

43 



44 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

occupation, and the concentration of all thought upon one's 
self and one's moods and conditions of mind, should have 
awakened all the subtleties of the imagination, and filled 
the brooding spirit with dreams of every wild and extrav- 
agant kind ; but it would not occur to us now to represent 
the stormy passage into a life dedicated to religion as filled 
with dancing nymphs and visions of the grossest sensual 
enjoyment — above all in the case of such a man as Jerome, 
whose chief temptations one would have felt to be of quite 
another kind. This however was the fashion of the time, 
and belonged more or less to the monkish ideal, which ex- 
aggerated the force of all these lower fleshly impulses by 
way of enhancing the virtue of him who successfully over- 
came them. The early fathers all scourged themselves till 
they were in danger of their lives, rolled themselves in the 
snow, lay on the cold earth, and lived on a handful of dried 
grain, perhaps on the grass and wild herbs to be found in 
the crevices of the rocks, in order to get the body into 
subjection: which might have been more easily done, we 
should have supposed, by putting other more wholesome 
subjects in the place of these visionary temptations, or 
filling the vacancy of the hours with hard work. But the 
dulness of an English clown or athlete, in whom muscular 
exercise extinguishes all visions, would not have been at 
all to the mind of a monkish neophyte, to whom the sharp- 
est stings of penitence and agonies of self-humiliation were 
necessary, whether he had done anything to call them forth 
or not. 

Jerome had gone through all these necessary sufferings 
without sparing himself a pang. His face pale with fast- 
ing, and his body so worn with penance and privation that 
it was almost dead, he had yet felt the fire of earthly pas- 
sions burning in his soul after the truest orthodox model. 
" The sack with which I was covered," he says, " deformed 
my members ; my skin and flesh were like those of an 



iv.] THE SOCIETY OF MARCELLA. 45 

Ethiop. But in. that vast solitude, burnt up by the blazing 
sun, all the delights of Kome appeared before my eyes. 
Scorpions and wild beasts were my companions, yet I 
seemed to hear the choruses of dancing girls." 

Finding no succom' anywhere, I flung myself at the feet of Jesus, 
bathing them with tears, drying them with the hair of my head. I 
passed day and night beating my breast, I banished myself even from 
my cell, as if it were conscious of all my evil thoughts ; and, rigid against 
myself, wandered further into the desert, seeking some deeper cave, 
some wilder mountain, some riven rock which I could make the prison 
of this miserable flesh, the place of my prayers. 

Sometimes he endeavoured to find refuge in his books, 
the precious parchments which he carried with him even 
in those unlikely regions : but here another temptation 
came in. " Unhappy that I am," he cries, " I fasted yet 
read Cicero. After spending nights of wakefulness and 
tears I found Plautus in my hands." To lay aside dram- 
atist, orator, and poet, so well known and familiar, and 
plunge into the imperfectly known character of the Hebrew 
which he was learning, the uncomprehended mysteries and 
rude style of the prophets, was almost as terrible as to fling 
himself fasting on the cold earth and hear the bones rattle 
in the skin which barely held them together. Yet some- 
times there were moments of deliverance : sometimes, when 
all the tears were shed, gazing up with dry exhausted eyes 
to the sky blazing with stars, " I felt myself transported to 
the midst of the angels, and full of confidence and joy, 
lifted up my voice and sang, ' Because of the savour of thy 
ointments we will run after thee.' " Thus both were recon- 
ciled, his imagination freed from temptation, and the poetry 
of the crabbed books, which were so different from Cicero, 
made suddenly clear to his troubled eyes. 

This was however but a small part of the training of 
Jerome. From his desert, as his spirit calmed, he carried 
on a great correspondence, and many of his letters became 
at once a portion of the literature of his time. One in 



46 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

particular, an eloquent and oratorical appeal to one of 
his friends, the Epistle to Heliodorus, with its elaborate 
description of the evils of the world and impassioned call 
to the peace of the desert, went through the religious 
circles of the time with that wonderful speed and facility 
of circulation which it is so difficult to understand, and was 
read in Marcella's palace on the Aventine and learnt by 
heart by some fervent listeners, so precious were its elabo- 
rate sentences held to be. This letter boldly proclaimed 
as the highest principle of life the extraordinary step which 
Melania, as well as so many other self-devoted persons, had 
taken — and called every Christian to the desert, whatever 
duties or enjoyments might stand in the way. Perhaps 
such exhortations are less dangerous than they seem to be, 
for the noble ladies who read and admired and learned by 
heart these moving appeals do not seem to have been 
otherwise affected by them. Like the song of the Ancient 
Mariner, they have to be addressed to the predestined, who 
alone have ears to hear. Heliodorus, upon whom all that 
eloquence was poured at first hand, turned a deaf ear, and 
lived and died in peace among his own people, among the 
lagoons where Venice as yet was not, notwithstanding all 
his friend could say. 

" What make you in your father's house, oh sluggish 
soldier ? " cried that eager voice ; " where are your ram- 
parts and trenches, under what tent of skins have you 
passed the bitter winter ? The trumpet of heaven sounds, 
and the great Leader comes upon the clouds to overcome 
the world. Let the little ones hang upon other necks ; 
let your mother rend her hair and her garments ; let your 
father stretch himself on the threshold to prevent you from 
passing : but arise, come thou ! Are you not pledged to the 
sacrifice even of father and mother ? If you believe in 
Christ, fight with me for His name and let the dead bury 
their dead." There were many who would dwell upon 



iv.] THE SOCIETY OF MARCELLA. 47 

these entreaties as upon a noble song rousing the heart and 
charming the ear, but the balance of human nature is but 
rarely disturbed by any such appeal. Even in that early 
age we may in the greater number of cases permit it to 
move all hearers without any great fears for the issue. 

Jerome, however, did not himself remain very long in 
his desert ; he was invaded in his very cell by the echoes 
of polemical warfare drifting in from the world he had left : 
and was called upon to pronounce himself for one side or 
the other, while yet, according to his own account, unaware 
what it was all about. He left his retirement unwillingly 
after some three years, quoting Virgil as to the barbarity of 
the race which refused him the hospitality of a little sand, 
and plunged into the fight at Antioch between contending 
bishops and parties, the heresy of Apollinaris, and all the 
rage of religious polemics. It was probably his intimate 
acquaintance with all the questions so strongly contested in 
the East, and his power of giving information on points 
which the Western Council could only know at second 
hand, which led him to Eome on the eve of the Council 
already referred to, called by Pope Damasus, in 382. The 
primary object of this Council was to settle matters of 
ecclesiastical polity, and especially the actual question as 
to which of the competitors was lawful bishop of Antioch, 
besides other questions concerning other important sees. 
It was no small assumption on the part of the bishops of 
the West, an assumption supported in those days by no 
dogma as to the supremacy of the Bishop of Eome, to 
interfere in the affairs of the East to this extent. And it 
was at once crushed by the action of the Church in the 
East, which immediately held a council of its own at 
Constantinople, and authoritatively decided every practical 
question. Jerome was the friend of all those bishops whose 
causes would have been pleaded at Rome, had not their 
own section of the Church thus made short Avork with 



48 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

them : and this no doubt commended him to the special 
attention of Damasus, even after these practical questions 
were set aside, and the heresy of Apollinaris, which had 
been intended to be treated in the second place, was turned 
into the only subject before the house. Jerome was deeply 
learned on the subject of Apollinaris too. It was on account 
of this new heresy that his place in Egypt had become 
untenable. His knowledge could not but be of the utmost 
importance to the Western bishops, who were not as a rule 
scholars, nor given to the subtle reasoning of the East. 
He was very welcome therefore in Rome, especially after 
the illness of the great Ambrose had denuded that Council, 
shorn of so much of its prestige, of almost the only impos- 
ing name left to it. This was the opportunity of such a 
man as Jerome, in himself, as we have said, still not much 
different from the many young religious adventurers who 
scoured the world. He was already, however, a distin- 
guished man of letters : he was known to Damasus, who 
had baptized him : he had learning enough to supplement 
the deficiencies of an entire Council, and for once these 
abilities were fully appreciated and found their right place. 
He had scarcely arrived in Rome when he was named Sec- 
retary of the Council — a temporary office which was after- 
wards prolonged and extended to that of Secretary to the 
Pope himself: thus the stranger became at once a func- 
tionary of the utmost importance in the proceedings of the 
See of Rome and in its development as a supreme power 
and authority in the Church. 

There is something strangely familiar and quaint in the 
appearance, so perfectly known to ourselves, of the gather- 
ing of a religious congress, convocation, or general assembly, 
when every considerable house and hospitable family is 
moved to receive some distinguished clerical visitor — which 
thus took place in Rome in the end of the fourth century, 
while still all was classic in the aspect of the Eternal City, 



iv.] THE SOCIETY OF MARCELLA. 49 

and the altars of the gods were still standing. The bishops 
and their trains arrived, making a little stir, sometimes 
even at the marble porticoes of great mansions where the 
master or mistress still professed a languid devotion to Jove 
or Mercury. Jerome, burnt brown by Egyptian suns, meagre 
and sinewy in his worn robe, with a humble brother or 
two in his train, accepted, after a little modest difficulty, 
the invitation or the allotment which led him to the Aven- 
tine, to the palace of Marcella, where he was. already well 
known, and where, though his eyes were downcast with a 
becoming reserve at the sight of all the ladies, he yet felt 
it right to follow the example of the Apostle and industri- 
ously overcome his own bashfulness. It was not perhaps a 
quality very strong in his nature, and very soon his new 
and splendid habitation became to the ascetic a home more 
dear than any he had yet known. 

It is curious to find how completely the principle of the 
association and friendship of a man and woman, failing 
closer ties, was adopted and recognised among these mystics 
and ascetics, without apparent fear of the comments of the 
world, or any of the self-consciousness which so often 
spoils such a relationship in ordinary society. Perhaps 
the gossips smiled even then upon the close alliance 
of Jerome with Paula, or Rufinus with Melania. There 
were calumnies abroad of the coarsest sort, as was inevi- 
table ; but neither monk nor lady seem to have been affected 
by them. It has constantly been so in the history of the 
Church, and it is interesting to collect such repeated testi- 
mony from the most unlikely quarter, to the advantage of 
this natural association. Women have had hard measure 
from Catholic doctors and saints. Their conventional posi- 
tion, so to speak, is that of the Seductress, always study- 
ing how to draw the thoughts of men away from higher 
things. The East and the West, though so much apart on 
other points, are at one in this. From the anguish of the 

E 



50 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

fathers in the desert to the supposed difficulties of the 
humblest ordinary priest of modern times, the disturbing 
influence is always supposed to be that of the woman. 
Gruesome figure as he was for any such temptation, Antony of 
Egypt himself was driven to extremity by the mere thought 
of her : and it is she who figures as danger or as victim in 
every ultra-Protestant plaint over the condition of the priest 
(except in Ireland, wonderful island of contradictions ! 
where priests and all men are more moved to fighting than 
to love). Yet notwithstanding there has been no founder 
of ecclesiastical institutions, no reformer, scarcely any saint, 
who has not been accompanied by the special friendship 
and affection of some woman. Jerome, who was so much 
the reverse, if we may venture to use these words, of a 
drawing-room hero, a man more used to vituperation than to 
gentleness of speech, often harsh as the desert from which 
he had come, was a notable example of this rule. From the 
time of his arrival on the Aventine to that of his death, his 
name was never dissociated from that of Paula, the pious 
lady par excellence of the group, the exquisite and delicate 
patrician who could scarcely plant her golden shoe firmly on 
the floor, but came tottering into Marcella's great house 
with a slave on either side to support her, in all the languid 
grace which was the highest fashion of the time. That such 
an example of conventional delicacy and luxury should have 
become the humble friend and secretary of Jerome, and 
that he, the pious solitary, acrid with opposition and con- 
troversy, should have found in this fine flower of society his 
life-long companion, both in labour and life, is more aston- 
ishing than words can say. 

His arrival in Marcella's hospitable house, with its crowds 
of feminine visitors, was in every way a great event. It 
brought the ladies into the midst of all the ecclesiastical 
questions of the time : and one can imagine how they 
crowded round him when he returned from the sittings of 



IV.] 



THE SOCIETY OF MARCELLA. 



51 



the Council — perhaps in the stillness of the evening after 
the dangerous hour of sunset, when all Rome comes forth to 
breathe again — assembling upon the marble terrace, from 




THE STEPS OP THE CAPITOL. 

which that magical scene was visible at their feet : the long 
withdrawing distance beyond the river, out of which some 
gleam might be apparent of the great church which already 



52 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

covered the tombs of the Apostles, and the white crest of 
the Capitol close at hand, and the lights of the town scat- 
tered dimly like glowworms among the wide openings and 
level lines of classical building which made the Koine of the 
time. The subjects discussed were not precisely those which 
the lighter conventional fancy, Boccaccio or Watteau, has 
associated with such groups, any more than the dark monk 
resembled the troubadour. But they were subjects which 
up to the present day have never lost their interest. The 
debates of the Council were chiefly taken up with an ex- 
tremely abstruse heresy, concerning the humanity of our 
Lord, how far the nature of man existed in him in connec- 
tion with the nature of God, and whether the Redeemer of 
mankind had taken upon himself a mere ethereal appear- 
ance of flesh, or an actual human body, tempted as we are 
and subject to all the influences which affect man. It is a 
question which has arisen again and again at various periods 
and in various manners, and the subtleties of such a con- 
troversy have proved of the profoundest interest to many 
minds. Jerome was not alone to report to those eager 
listeners the course of the debates, and to demolish over 
again the intricate arguments by which that assembly of 
divines wrought itself to fever heat. The great Bishop 
Epiphanius, the great heresy-hunter of his day — who had 
fathomed all the fallacious reasonings of all the schismatics, 
and could detect a theological error at the distance of a 
continent, in whatever garb it might shield itself — was the 
guest of Paula, and no doubt, along with his hostess, would 
often join these gatherings. The two doctors thus brought 
together would vie with each other in making the course of 
the controversy clear to the women, who hung upon their 
lips with keen apprehension of every phrase and the enthu- 
siastic partisanship which inspires debate. There could be 
no better audience for the fine-drawn arguments which such 
a controversy demands. How strange to think that these 



it.] THE SOCIETY OF MARCELLA. 53 

hot discussions were going on, and the flower of the artificial 
society of Rome keenly occupied by such a question, while 
still the shadow of Jove lingered on the Capitol, and the 
Rome of the heathen emperors, the Rome of the great Re- 
public, stood white and splendid, a shadow, yet a mighty 
one, Vpon the seven hills ! 

Before his arrival in Rome, Jerome had been but little 
known to the general world. His name had been heard in 
connection with some eloquent letters which had flown about 
from hand to hand among the finest circles ; but his true 
force and character were better known in the East than in 
the West, and it was in part this Council which gave him 
his due place in the ranks of the Church. He was no priest 
to be promoted to bishoprics or established in high places. 
He had indeed been consecrated against his will by an 
enthusiastic prelate, eager to secure his great services to the 
Church ; but, monk and ascetic as he was, he had no inclina- 
tion towards the sacerdotal character, and had said but one 
mass, immediately after his ordination, and no more. It 
was not therefore as spiritual director in the ordinary sense 
of the words that he found his place in Marcella's house, 
but at first at least as a visitor merely and probably for 
the time of the Council alone. But the man of the desert 
would seem to have been charmed out of himself by the 
unaccustomed sweetness of that gentle life. He would in- 
deed have been hard to please if he had not felt the attrac- 
tion of such a retreat, not out of, but on the edge of, the 
great world, with its excitements and warfare within reach, 
the distant murmur of the crowd, the prospect of the great 
city with its lights and rumours, yet sacred quiet and de- 
lightful sympathy within. The little community had given 
up the luxuries of the age, but they could not have given up 
the refinements of gentle breeding, the high-born manners 
and grace, the charm of educated voices and cultivated 
minds. And there was even more than these attractions to 



54 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

gratify the scholar. Not an allusion could be made to the 
studies of which he was most proud, the rugged Hebrew 
which he had painfully mastered, or ornate Greek, but some 
quick intelligence there would take it up ; and the poets 
and sages of their native tongue, the Cicero and Virgil from 
whom he could not wean himself even in the desert, Were 
their own literature, their valued inheritance. And not in 
the most devoted community of monks could the great 
orator have found such undivided attention and interest 
in his work as among the ladies of the Aventine, or sec 
retaries so eager and ready to help, so proud to be asso- 
ciated with it. He was at the same time within reach of 
Bishop Damasus, a man of many experiences, who seems to 
have loved him as a son, and who not only made him his 
secretary, but his private counsellor in many difficulties and 
dangers : and Jerome soon became the centre also of a little 
band of chosen friends, distinguished personages in Eoman 
society connected in faith and in blood with the sisterhood, 
whom he speaks of as Daniel, Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, 
some of whom were his own old companions and school- 
fellows, all deeply attached to him and proud of his friend- 
ship. No more delightful position could have been imagined 
for the repose and strengthening of a man who had endured 
many hardships, and who had yet before him much more 
to bear. 

Jerome remained nearly three years in this happy retreat, 
and it was here that he executed the first portion of his 
great work, that first authoritative translation of the entire 
Canon of Scripture which still retains its place in the 
Church of Rome — the Vulgate, so named when the Latin 
of Jerome, which is by no means that of Cicero, was the 
language of the crowd. In every generation what is called 
the higher education of women is treated as a new and sur- 
prising thing by the age, as if it were the greatest novelty ; 
but we doubt whether Girton itself could produce graduates 



iv.] THE SOCIETY OF MARCELLA. 55 

as capable as Paula and Marcella of helping in this work, 
discussing the turning of a phrase or the meaning of an 
abstruse Hebrew word, and often holding their own opinion 
against that of the learned writer whose scribes they were 
so willing to be. This undertaking gave a double charm to 
the life, which went on with much variety and animation, 
with news from all quarters, with the constant excitement 
of a new charity established, a new community founded : and 
never without amusement either, much knowledge of the 
sayings and doings of society outside, visits from the finest 
persons, and a daily entertainment in the nutterings of 
young Blgesilla between the world and the convent, and 
her pretty ways, so true a woman of the world, yet all the 
same a predestined saint : and the doings of Fabiola, one 
day wholly absorbed in the foundation of her great hospital, 
the first in Rome, the next not so sure in her mind that love, 
even by means of a second divorce, might not win the day 
over devotion. Even Paula in these days was but half de- 
cided, and came, a dazzling vision in her jewels and her 
crown, to visit her friends, in all the pomp of autumnal 
beauty, among her daughters, of whom that serious little 
maiden Eustochium was the only one quite detached from 
the world. Eor was there not also going on under their eyes 
the gentle wooing of Pammachius and Paulina to make it 
apparent to the world that the ladies on the Aventine did 
not wholly discredit the ordinary ties of life, although they 
considered with St. Paul that the other was the better way ? 
The lovers were as devout and as much given up to good 
works as any of them, yet, as even Jerome might pardon 
once in a way, preferred to the cloister the common happi- 
ness of life. These good works were the most wonderful 
part of all, for every member of the community was rich. 
Their fortunes were like the widow's cruse. One hears of 
great foundations like that of Fabiola's hospital and Me- 
lania's provision for the monks in Africa, for which every- 



56 THE MAKERS OE MODERN ROME. [chap. 

tiling was sacrificed ; yet, next clay, next year, renewed 
beneficences were forthcoming, and always a faithful in- 
tendant, a good steward, to continue the bountiful supplies. 
So wonderful indeed are these liberalities, and so extraordi- 
nary the details, that it is surprising to find that no learned 
German, or other savant, has, as yet, attempted to prove 
that the fierce and vivid Jerome never existed, that his 
letters were the work of half a dozen hands, and the subjects 
of his brilliant narrative altogether fictitious — Melania and 
Paula being but mythical repetitions of the same incident, 
wrapt in the colours of fable. This hypothesis might be 
made to seem very possible if it were not, perhaps, a little too 
late in the centuries for the operations of that high-handed 
criticism, and Jerome himself a very hard fact to encounter. 
But the great wealth of these ladies remains one of the 
most singular circumstances in the story. When they sell 
and sacrifice everything it is clear it must only be their float- 
ing possessions, leaving untouched the capital, as we should 
say, or the estates, perhaps, more justly, the wealthy source 
from which the continued stream flowed. This gave a 
splendour and a largeness of living to the home on the 
Aventine. There was no need to send any petitioner away 
empty, charity being the rule of life, and no thought having 
as yet entered the most elevated mind that to give to the 
poor was inexpedient for them, and apt to establish a pauper 
class, dependent and willing to be so. These ladies filled 
with an even and open hand every wallet and every mouth. 
They received orphans, they provided for widows, they filled 
the poor quarters below the hill — where all the working 
people about the Marmorata clustered near the river bank, 
in the garrets and courtyards of the old houses — with 
asylums and places of refuge. The miserable and idle 
populace of which the historian speaks so contemptuously, 
the fellows who hung about the circuses, and had no name 
but the nicknames of coarsest slang, the Cabbage-feeders, 



iv.] THE SOCIETY OF MARCELLA. 57 

the Sausage-eaters, &c., the Porringers and Gluttons, were, 
no doubt, left all the more free to follow their own foul 
devices ; but the poor women, who though perhaps far from 
blameless suffer most in the debasement of the population, 
and the unhappy little swarms of children, profited by this 
universal balm of charity, and let us hope grew up to some- 
thing a little better than their sires. For however paganism 
might linger among the higher class, the multitudes were all 
nominally Christian. It was to the tombs of the Apostles 
that they made their pilgrimages, rather than to the four 
hundred temples of the gods. " For all its gilding the 
Capitol looks dingy," says Jerome himself in one of his 
letters ; " every temple in Rome is covered with soot and 
cobwebs, and the people pour past those half-ruined shrines 
to visit the tombs of the apostles." 

The house of Marcella was in the condition we have at- 
tempted to describe when Jerome became its guest. It was 
in no way more rigid in its laws than at the beginning. The 
little ecclesia domestica, as he happily called it, seems to have 
been entirely without rule or conventual order. They sang 
psalms together (sometimes we are led to believe, in the 
original Hebrew learned for the purpose — but it must have 
been few who attained to this height), they read together, 
they held their little conferences on points of doctrine, with 
much consultation of learned texts ; but there is no mention 
even of any regular religious service, much less of matins, 
and vespers, and nones and compline, and the other ritual- 
istic divisions of a monastic day ; for indeed no rule had 
been as yet invented for any coenobites of the West. We 
do not hear even of a daily mass. Often there were deser- 
tions from the ranks, sometimes a young maiden withdraw- 
ing from the social enclosure, sometimes a young widow 
drawn back into the vortex of the fashionable world. But 
on the whole the record of the little domestic church, with 
its bodyguard of faithful friends and servitors outside, and 



58 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

Jerome, its pride and crown of glory, within, is one of 
serene and happy life, dignified by everything that was best 
in the antique world. 

It was after the arrival of Jerome that the little tragedy 
of Blaesilla, the eldest daughter of Paula, occurred, rend- 
ing their gentle hearts. " Our dear widow," as Jerome 
called her, had no idea of second marriage in her mind. 
The first, it would appear, had not been happy ; and Blse- 
silla, fair and rich and young, had every mind to enjoy her 
freedom, her fine dresses, and all the pleasures of her youth. 
Safely lodged under her mother's wing, with those irre- 
proachable friends on the Aventine about her, no gossip 
touched her gentle name. The community amused itself 
with her light-hearted ways. " Our widow loves to adorn 
herself. She is the whole day before her mirror," says 
Jerome, and there is no harsh tone in his voice. But in 
the midst of her gay and innocent life she fell ill of a fever, 
no unusual thing. It lingered, however, more than a month 
and took a dangerous form, so that the doctors began to 
despair. When things were at this point Bleesilla had a 
dream or vision, in her fever, in which the Saviour appeared 
to her and bade her arise as He had done to Lazarus. It 
was the crisis of the disease, and she immediately began to 
recover, with the deepest faith that she had been cured by a 
miracle. The butterfly was touched beyond measure by this 
divine interposition, as she believed, in her favour, and as 
soon as she was well, made up her mind to devote herself to 
God. "An extraordinary thing has happened," cries Jerome. 
"Blsesilla has put on a brown gown! What a scandal is 
this ! " He launches forth thereupon into a diatribe upon 
the fashionable ladies, with faces of gypsum like idols, who 
dare not shed a tear lest they should spoil their painted 
cheeks, and who are the true scandal to Christianity : then 
narrates with growing tenderness the change that has taken 
place in the habits of the young penitent. She, whose 



iv.] THE SOCIETY OF MARCELLA. 59 

innocent head was tortured with curls and plaits and 
crowned with the fashionable mitella, now finds a veil 
enough for her. She lies on the ground who found the soft- 
est cushions hard, and is up the first in the morning to sing 
Alleluia in her silvery voice. 

The conversion rang through Home all the more that 
Blsesilla was known to have had no inclination toward 
austerity of life. Her relations, half pagan and altogether 
worldly, were hot against the fanatic monk, who according 
to the usual belief tyrannised over the whole house in which 
he had been so kindly received, and the weak-minded mother 
who had lent herself to his machinations. The question 
fired Eome, and became a matter of discussion under every 
portico and wherever men or women assembled. Was it 
lawful, had it any warrant in law or history, this new folly 
of opposing marriage and representing celibacy as a happier 
and holier state ? It was against every tradition of the 
race ; it tore families in pieces, abstracted from society its 
most brilliant members, alienated the patrimony of families, 
interfered with succession and every natural law. In the 
turmoil raised by this event, a noisy public controversy 
arose. Two assailants presented themselves, one a priest, 
who had been for a time a monk, and one a layman, to 
maintain the popular canon, the superiority of marriage 
and the natural life of the world. These arguments had a 
great effect upon the public mind, naturally prone to take 
fright at any interference with its natural laws. They had 
very serious results at a later period both in the life of 
Paula and that of Jerome, and they seem to have threat- 
ened for a time serious injury to the newly established con- 
vents which Marcella's community had planted everywhere, 
and from which half-hearted sisters took this opportunity of 
separating themselves. It is amusing to find that, by a 
curious and furious twist of the usual argument, Jerome in 
his indignant and not always temperate defence describes 



GO THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

these deserters as old and ugly, and unable to find husbands 
notwithstanding the most desperate efforts. It has been 
very common to allege this as a reason for the self-dedica- 
tion of nuns : and it is always a handy missile to throw. 

Jerome was not the man to let any such fine opening for 
a controversy pass. He burst forth upon his opponents, 
thundering from the heights of the Aventine, reducing the 
feeble writers who opposed him to powder. Helvidius, the 
layman above mentioned, had taken up the question — a 
question always offensive and injurious to natural senti-' 
ment and prejudice, exclusive even of religious feeling, and 
which, whatever opinions may prevail, it must always be 
profane to touch — of the Virgin Mary herself, and the ex- 
istence of persons called brothers and sisters of our Lord. 
To him Jerome replied by a flood of angry eloquence, as 
well as some cogent argument — though argument, however 
strong, is insupportable on such a subject. And he launched 
forth upon the other, Jovinian, the false monk, that famous 
letter on Virginity, nominally addressed to Eustochium, in 
which one of the most trenchant pictures ever made of 
society, both lay and clerical — the habits, the ideas, the 
follies of debased and fallen Rome — is of far more force 
and importance than the argument, and furnishes us with 
such a spectacle as very few writers at any time or in any 
place are capable of placing before the eyes of the world. I 
have already quoted from this wonderful composition the 
portrait of the popular priest. 

The foolish virgin who puts on an appearance of indiffer- 
ence to worldly things, and " under the ensign of a holy 
profession draws towards her the regard of men," is treated 
with equal severity. 

We cast out and banish from our sight those virgins who only wish 
to seem to he so. Their robes have but a narrow stripe of purple, they 
let their hair hang about their shoulders, their sleeves are short and 
narrow, and they have cheap shoes upon their feet. This is all their 
sanctity. They make by these pretences a higher price for their inno- 



iv.] THE SOCIETY OF MARCELLA. Gl 

cence. Avoid, dear Eustochium, the secret thought that having ceased 
to court attention in cloth of gold you may begin to do so in mean 
attire. When you come into an assembly of the brothers and sisters 
do not, like some, choose the lowest seat or plead that you are un- 
worthy of a footstool. Do not speak with a faltering voice as if worn 
out with fasting, or lean upon the shoulders of your neighbours as if 
fainting. There are some who thus disfigure their faces that they may 
appear to men to fast. As soon as they are seen, they begin to groan, 
they look down, they cover their faces, all but one eye. Their dress 
is sombre, their girdles are of sackcloth. Others assume the mien of 
men, blushing that they have been born women, who cut their hair 
short, and walk abroad with effrontery, confronting the world with the 
impudent faces of eunuchs. ... I have seen, but will not name, one 
among the noblest of Rome who in the very basilica of the blessed 
Peter gave alms with her own hands at the head of her retinue of ser- 
vants, "but struck in the face a poor woman who had twice held out 
her hand. Flee also the men who wear an iron chain, who have long 
hair like women against the rule of the Apostle, a miserable black robe, 
who go barefooted in the cold, and have in appearance at least an air 
of sadness and anxiety. 

The following sketch of the married woman who thinks 
of the things of the world, how she may please her husband, 
while the unmarried are free to please God, has an interest 
long outliving the controversy, in the light it throws upon 
contemporary Roman life. 

Do you think there is no difference between one who spends her 
time in fastings, and humbles herself night and day in prayer — and 
her who must prepare her face for the coming of her husband, orna- 
ment herself, and put on airs of fascination? The first veils her beauty 
and the graces which she despises ; the other paints herself before a 
mirror, to make herself more fair than God has made her. Then come 
the children, crying, rioting, hanging about her neck, waiting for her 
kiss. Expenses follow without end, her time is spent in making up 
her accounts, her purse always open in her hand. Here there is a 
troop of cooks, their garments girded like soldiers for the battle, hash- 
ing and steaming. Then the women spinning and babbling. Anon 
comes the husband, followed by his friends. The wife flies about like 
a swallow from one end of the house to the other, to see that all is 
right, the beds made, the marble floors shining, flowers in the vases, 
the dinner prepared. Is there in all that, I ask, a thought of God ? 
Are these happy homes ? No, the fear of God is absent there, where 
the drum is sounded, the lyre struck, where the flute breathes out and 
the cymbals clash. Then the parasite abandons shame and glories in 
it, if he amuses the host who has invited him. The victims of debauch 
have their place at these feasts ; they appear half naked in transparent 
garments which unclean eyes see through. What part is there for the 
wife in these orgies ? She must learn to take pleasure in such scenes, 
or else to bring discord into her house, 



62 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

He paints for us, in another letter, a companion picture 
of the widow remarried. 

Your contract of marriage will scarcely be written when you will be 
compelled to make your will. Your new husband pretends to be very 
ill, a,nd makes a will in your favour, desiring you to do the same. But 
he lives, and it is you who die. And if it happens that you have sons 
by your second marriage, war blazes forth in your house, a domestic 
contest without term or conclusion. Those who owe life to you, you 
are not permitted to love equally, fully. The second envies the caress 
which you give to the son of the first. If, on the contrary, it is he 
who has children by another wife, although you may be the most lov- 
ing of mothers, you are condemned as a stepmother by all the rhetoric 
of the comedies, the pantomimes, and orators. If your stepson has a 
headache you have poisoned him. If he eats nothing you starve him, 
if you serve him his food it is worse still. What compensation is there 
in a second marriage to make up for so many woes ? 

This tremendous outburst and others of a similar kind 
raised up, as was natural, a strong feeling against Jerome. 
It was not likely that the originals of these trenchant 
sketches would forgive easily the man who put them up in 
effigy on the very walls of Rome. That the pictures were 
identified was clear from another letter, in which he asks 
whether he is never to speak of any vice or folly lest he 
should offend a certain Onasus, who took everything to 
himself. Little cared he whom he offended, or what galled 
jade might wince. But at last the remonstrances of his 
friends subdued his rage. " When you read this you will 
bend your brows and check my freedom, putting a finger on 
my mouth to stop me from speaking," he wrote to Marcella. 
It was full time that the prudent mistress of the house 
which contained such a champion should interfere. 

While still the conflict raged which had been roused by 
the retirement of Blsesilla from the world, and which had 
thus widened into the general question, far more important 
than any individual case, between the reforming party in 
tire Church, the Puritans of the time — then specially repre- 
sented by the new development of monasticism — and the 
world which it called all elevated souls to abandon : inci- 



iv.] THE SOCIETY OF MARCELLA. 63 

dents were happening which, plunged the cheerful home on 
the Aventine into sorrow and made another noble house in 
Borne desolate. The young convert in the bloom of her 
youthful devotion, who had been raised up miraculously as 
they ail thought from her sick bed in order that she might 
devote her life to Christ, was again struck down by sickness, 
and this time without any intervention of a miracle. Blae- 
silla died in the fulness of her youth, scarcely twenty-two, 
praying only that she might be forgiven for not having been 
able to do what she had wished to do in the service of her 
Lord. She Was a great lady, though she had put her natural 
splendour away from her, and it was with all the pomp of a 
patrician funeral that she was carried to her rest. It is 
again Jerome who makes visible to us the sad scene of this 
funeral, and the feeling of the multitude towards the austere 
reformers who had by their cruel exactions cut off this 
flower of Roman society before her time. Paula, the be- 
reaved mother, followed, as was the custom, the bier of her 
daughter through the crowded streets of Rome, scarcely able 
in the depths of her grief to support herself, and at last 
fell fainting into the arms of the attendants, and had to be 
carried home insensible. At this sight, which might have 
touched their hearts, the multitude with one voice cried out 
against the distracted mother. " She weeps, the daughter 
whom she has killed with fastings," they cried. " Why 
are not these detestable monks driven from the city ? why 
are they not stoned or thrown into the river ? It is they 
who have seduced this miserable woman to be herself a 
monk against her will — this is why she weeps for her child 
as no woman has ever wept before." Paula, let us hope, 
did not hear these cries of popular rage. The streets rung 
with them, the populace always ready for tumult, and the 
disgusted and angry nobles encouraging every impulse 
towards revolt. No doubt many of the higher classes had 
looked on with anxiety and alarm at the new movement 



64 



THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [ch. iv. 



which dissipated among the poor so many fine inheritances 
and threatened to carry off ont of the world, of which they 
had been the ornaments, so many of the most distinguished 
women. Any sudden rising which might kill or banish 
the pestilent monk or disperse the troublesome community 
would naturally find favour in their eyes. 




THE LATERAN PROM THE AVENTINE. 




J[ ^' 



PORTICO OF OCTAVIA. 



CHAPTER V. 

PAULA. 

PAULA was a woman of very different character from the 
passionate and austere Melania who preceded and re- 
sembled her in many details of her career. Full of tender 
and yet sprightly humour, of love and gentleness and human 
kindness, a true mother benign and gracious, yet with those 
individualities of lively intelligence, understanding, and 
sympathy which quicken that mild ideal and bring in all 
the elements of friendship and the social life — she was the 
most important of those visitors and associates who made 
the House on the Aventine the fashion, and filled it with 
all that was best in Rome. Though her pedigree seems a 
little delusive, her relationship to iEmilius Paulus resolving 
itself into a descent from his sister through her own mother, 
it is yet apparent that her claims of the highest birth and 
position were fully acknowledged, and that no Roman ma- 
f G5 



66 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

tron held a higher or more honourable place. She was rich 
as they all were, highly allied, the favourite of society, 
neglecting none of its laws, though always with a love of 
intellectual intercourse and a tendency to devotion. Which 
of these tendencies drew her first towards Marcella and her 
little society we cannot tell : but it is evident that both 
found satisfaction there, and were quickened by the strong 
impulse given by Jerome when he came out of the schools 
and out of the wilds, at once Scholar and Hermit, to this 
house of friendship, the Ecclesia Domestica of Rome. That 
all this rising tide of life, the books, the literary work, the 
ever-entertaining companionship, as well as the higher in- 
fluence of a life of self-denial and renunciation, as under- 
stood in those days — should have at first added a charm 
even to that existence upon its border, the life in which 
every motive contradicted the new law, is very apparent. 
Many a great lady, deeply plunged in all the business of the 
world, has felt the same attraction, the intense pleasure of 
an escape from those gay commotions which in the light of 
the other life seem so insignificant and wearisome, the sen- 
sation of rest and tranquillity and something higher, purer, 
in the air — which yet perhaps at first gave a zest to the 
return into the world, in itself once more a relief from that 
higher tension and those deeper requirements. The process 
by which the attraction grew is very comprehensible also. 
Common pleasures and inane talk of society grow duller and 
duller in comparison with the conversation full of wonders 
and revelations which would keep every faculty in exercise, 
the ' mutual studies, the awe yet exhilaration of mutual 
prayers and psalms, the realisation of spiritual things. And 
no doubt the devout child's soul so early fixed, the little 
daughter who had thought of nothing from her cradle but 
the service of God, must have drawn the ever-tender, ever- 
sympathetic mother still nearer to the centre of all. The 
beautiful mother among her girls, one betrothed, one self- 



v.] PAULA. 67 

consecrated, one in all the gay emancipation of an early 
widowhood, affords the most charming picture among the 
graver women — women all so near to each other in nature, 
— mutually related, members of one community, linked by 
every bond of common association and tradition. 

When Blsesilla on her recovery from her illness threw 
off her gaieties and finery, put on the brown gown, and 
adopted all the rules of the community, the life of Paula, 
trembling between two spheres, was shaken by a stronger 
impulse than ever before. But how difficult was any decis- 
ion in her circumstances! She had her boy and girl at 
home as yet undeveloped — her only boy, dragged as much 
as might be to the other side, persuaded to think his mother 
a fanatic and his sisters fools. Paula did all she could to 
combine the two lives, indulging perhaps in an excess of 
austerities under the cloth of gold and jewels which, as 
symbols of her state and rank, she could not yet put off. 
The death of Bleesilla was the shock which shattered her 
life to pieces. Even the coarse reproaches of the streets 
show us with what anguish of mourning this first breach in 
her family overwhelmed her. " This is why she weeps for 
her child as no woman has ever wept before," the crowd 
cried, turning her sorrow into an accusation, as if she had 
thus acknowledged her own fault in leaving Blaesilla to 
privations she was not able to endure. Did the cruel cen- 
sure perhaps awake an echo in her heart, ready as all hearts 
are in that moment of prostration to blame themselves for 
something neglected, something done amiss ? At least it 
would remind Paula that she herself had never made com- 
pletely this sacrifice which her child had made with such 
fatal effect. She was altogether overcome by her sorrow : her 
sobs and cries rent the hearts of her friends. She refused 
all food, and when exhausted by the paroxysms of violent 
grief fell into a lethargy of despair more alarming still. 
When every one else had tried their best to draw her from 



68 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

this excess of affliction, the ladies had recourse to Jerome in 
their extremity : for it was clear that Paula must be roused 
from this collapse of all courage and hope, or she must die. 
Jerome did not refuse to answer the appeal : though help- 
less as even the most anxious affection is in face of this 
anguish of the mother which will not be comforted, he did 
what he could; he wrote to her from the house of their 
friends who shared yet could not still her sorrow, a letter full 
of grief and sympathy, in the forlorn hope of bringing her 
back to life. Such letters heaven knows are common enough. 
We have all written, and most of us have received them, 
and found in their tender arguments, in their assurances of 
final good and present fellow feeling, only fresh pangs and 
additional sickness of heart. Yet Jerome's letter was not 
of a common kind. No one could have touched the shrink- 
ing heart with a softer touch than this fierce controversialist, 
this fiery and remorseless champion : for he had yet a more 
effectual spell to move the mourner, in that he was himself 
a mourner, not much less deeply touched than she. " Who 
am I," he cries, " to forbid the tears of a mother who myself 
weep ? This letter is written in tears. He is not the best 
consoler whom his own groans master, whose being is un- 
manned, whose broken words distil into tears. Yes, Paula, 
I call to witness Christ Jesus whom our Bleesilla now fol- 
lows, and the angels who are now her companions, I, too, 
her father in the spirit, her foster-father in affection, could 
also say with you — Cursed be the day that I was born. 
Great waves of doubt surge over my soul as over yours. 
I, too, ask myself why so many old men live on, why the 
impious, the murderers, the sacrilegious, live and thrive 
before our eyes, while blooming youth and childhood with- 
out sin are cut off in their flower." It is not till after he 
has thus wept with her that he takes a severer tone. " You 
deny yourself food, not from desire of fasting, but of sor- 
row. If you believed your daughter to be alive, you would 



v.] PAULA. 69 

not thus mourn that she has migrated to a better world- 
Have you no fear lest the Saviour should say to you, 'Are 
you angry, Paula, that your daughter has become my daugh- 
ter ? Are you vexed at my decree, and do you with rebel- 
lious tears grudge me the possession of Blaesilla ? ' At the 
sound of your cries Jesus, all-clement, asks, 'Why do you 
weep? the damsel is not dead but sleepeth.' And when 
you stretch yourself despairing on the grave of your child, 
the angel who is there asks sternly, ' Why seek ye the liv- 
ing among the dead ? ' " 

In conclusion Jerome adds a wonderful vow : " So long 
as breath animates my body, so long as I continue in life, I 
engage, declare and promise that Blaesilla's name shall be for 
ever on my tongue, that my labours shall be dedicated to 
her honour, and my talents devoted to her praise." It was 
the last word which the enthusiasm of tenderness could say : 
and no doubt the fervour and warmth of the promise, better 
kept than such promises usually are, gave a little comfort 
to the sorrowful soul. 

When Paula came back to the charities and devotions of 
life after this terrible pause a bond of new friendship was 
formed between her and Jerome. They had wept together, 
they bore the reproach together, if perhaps their trembling 
hearts might feel there was any truth in it, of having pos- 
sibly exposed the young creature they had lost to privations 
more than she could bear. But it is little likely that this 
modern refinement of feeling affected these devoted souls; 
for such privations were in their eyes the highest privileges 
of life, and in fasting man was promoted to eat the food of 
angels. At all events, the death of Bleesilla made a new 
bond between them, the bond of a mutual and most dear 
remembrance never to be forgotten. 

This natural consequence of a common sorrow inflamed 
the popular rage against Jerome to the wildest fury. 
Paula's relations and connections, half of them, as in most 



70 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

cases in the higher ranks of society, still pagan — who now 
saw before them the almost certain alienation to charitable 
and religions purposes of Paula's wealth, pursued him with 
calumny and outrage, and did not hesitate to accuse the 
lady and the monk of a shameful relationship and every 
crime. To make things worse, Damasus, whose friend and 
secretary, almost his son, Jerome had been, died a few 
months after Blaesilla, depriving him at once of that high 
place to which the Pope's favour naturally elevated him. 
He complains of the difference which his close connection 
with Paula's family had made on the general opinion of him. 
"All, almost without exception, thought me worthy of the 
highest sacerdotal position ; there was but one word for me 
in the world. By the mouth of the blessed Damasus it was 
I who spoke. Men called me holy, humble, eloquent." But 
all this had changed ' since the recent events in Paula's 
house. She on her side, wounded to the heart by the 
reproaches poured upon her, and the shameful slanders of 
which she was the object, and which had no doubt stung 
her into renewed life and energy, resolved upon a step 
stronger than that of joining the community, and announced 
her intention of leaving Borne, seeking a refuge in the holy 
city of Jerusalem, and shaking the dust of her native coun- 
try, where she had been so vilified, from her feet. This 
resolution was put to Jerome's account as might have been 
expected, and when his patron's death left him without pro- 
tection every enemy he had ever made, and no doubt they 
were many, was let loose. He whom courtiers had sought, 
whose hands had been kissed and his favour implored by 
all who sought anything from the Pope, was now greeted 
when he appeared in the streets by fierce cries of " Greek," 
" Impostor," " Monk," and his presence became a danger for 
the peaceful house in which he had found a refuge. 

It is scarcely possible to be very sorry for Jerome. He 
had not minced his words : he had flung libels and satires 



v.] PAULA. 71 

about that must have stung and wounded many, and in such 
matters reprisals are inevitable. But Paula had done no 
harm. Even granting the case that Blsesilla's health had 
been ruined by fasting, the mother herself had gone through 
the same privations and exulted in them : and her only 
fault was to have followed and sympathised in, with enthu- 
siasm, the new teaching and precepts of the divine life in 
the form which was most highly esteemed in her time. No 
cry from that silent woman comes into the old world, ring- 
ing with so many outcries, where the rude Boman crowd 
bellowed forth abuse, and the ladies on their silken couches 
whispered the scandal of Paula's liaison to each other, and 
the men scoffed and sneered over their banquets at the mere 
thought of such a friendship being innocent. Some one of 
their enemies ventured to speak or write publicly the vile 
accusation, and was instantly brought to book by Jerome, 
and publicly forswore the scandal he had spread. " But," 
as Jerome says, " a lie is hard to kill ; the world loves to be- 
lieve an evil story : it puts its faith in the lie, "But not in the 
recantation." And the situation of affairs became such that 
he too saw no expedient possible but that of leaving Borne. 
He would seem to have been, or to have imagined himself, 
in danger of his life, and his presence was unquestionably a 
danger for his friends. A man of more patient tempera- 
ment and quiet mind might have thought that Paula's 
resolution to go away was a reason for him to stay, and 
thus to bear the scandal and outrage alone, at least 
until she was safe out of its reach — giving no possible 
occasion for the adversary to blaspheme. But Jerome was 
evidently not disposed to any such self-abnegation, and 
indeed it is very likely that his position had become intoler- 
able and that his only resource was departure. It was in 
the summer of 385, nearly three years after his arrival 
in Borne — in August, seven months after the death of 
Damasus, and not a year after that of Blaesilla, that he 



n THE MAKERS OP MODERN ROME. [chap. 

left " Babylon," as lie called the tumultuous city, writing 
his farewell with tears of grief and wrath to the Lady 
Asella, now one of the eldest and most important members 
of the community, and thanking God that he was found 
worthy of the hatred of the world. We are apt to speak as 
if travelling were an invention of our time : but as a matter 
of fact facilities of travelling then existed little inferior to 
those we ourselves possessed thirty or forty years ago, and 
it was no strange or unusual journey from Ostia at the 
mouth of the Tiber, by the soft Mediterranean shores, past 
the vexed rocks of the Sirens in the blazing weather, to 
Cyprus that island of monasteries, and Antioch a vexed and 
heresy-tainted city yet full of friends and succour. Jerome 
had a cluster of faithful followers round him, and was 
escorted by a weeping crowd to the very point of his 
embarkation: but yet swept forth from Koine in a passion 
of indignation and distress. 

It was while waiting for the moment of departure in the 
ship that was to carry him far from his friends and the life 
he loved, that Jerome's letters to Asella were written. They 
were full of anger and sorrow, the utterance of a heart sore 
and wounded, of a man driven almost to despair. " I am 
said," he cries, " to be an infamous person, a deceiver full 
of guile, an impostor with all the arts of Satan at his fingers' 
ends. . . . These men have kissed my hands in public, and 
stung me in secret with a viper's tooth ; they compassionate 
me with their lips and rejoice in their hearts. But the 
Lord saw them, and had them in derision, reserving them 
to appear with me, his unfortunate servant, at the last 
judgment. One of them ridicules my walk, and my laugh : 
another makes of my features a subject of accusation: to 
another the simplicity of my manners is the evil thing: and 
I have lived three years in the company of such men ! " He 
continues his indignant self-defence as follows : 

" I have lived surrounded by virgins, and to some of them 



v.J PAULA. 75 

I explained as best I could the divine books. With study 
came an increased knowledge of each other, and with that 
knowledge mutual confidence. Let them say if they have 
ever found anything in my conduct unbecoming a Christian. 
Have I not refused all presents, great or small ? Gold has 
never sounded in my palm. Have they heard from my lips 
any doubtful word, or seen in my eyes a bold or hazardous 
look ? Never, and no one dares say so. The only objection 
to me is that I am a man: and that objection only appeared 
when Paula announced her intention of going to Jerusalem. 
They believed my accuser when he lied : why do they not 
believe him when he retracts ? He is the same man now as 
then. He imputed false crimes to me, now he declares me 
innocent. What a man confesses under torture is more 
likely to be true than that which he gives forth in a moment 
of gaiety : but people are more prone to believe such a lie 
than the truth. 

" Of all the ladies in Kome Paula only, in her mourning 
and fasting, has touched my heart. Her songs were psalms, 
her conversations were of the Gospel, her delight was in 
purity, her life a long fast. Put when I began to revere, 
respect, and venerate her, as her conspicuous virtue deserved, 
all my good qualities forsook me on the spot. 

" Had Paula and Melania rushed to the baths, taken ad- 
vantage of their wealth and position to join, perfumed and 
adorned, in one worship God and their wealth, their free- 
dom and pleasure, they would have been known as great 
and saintly ladies ; but now it is said they seek to be ad- 
mired in sackcloth and ashes, and go down to hell laden 
with fasting and mortifications : as if they could not as well 
have been damned along with the rest, amid the applauses 
of the crowd. If it were Pagans and Jews who condemned 
them, they would have had the consolation of being hated 
by those who hated Christ, but these are Christians, or men 
known by that name. 



76 



THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 



" Lady Asella, I write these lines in haste, while the ship 
spreads its sails. I write them with sobs and tears, yet 
giving thanks to God to have been found worthy of the 
hatred of the world. Salute Paula and Eustochiuin, mine 
in Christ whether the world pleases or not, salute Albina 
your mother, Marcella your sister, Marcellina, Felicita : say 
to them that we shall meet again before the judgment seat 




TEINITA DE MONTI. 



of God, where the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed. 
Remember me, oh example of purity ! and may thy prayers 
tranquillise before me the tumults of the sea ! " 

The agitation with which the community of ladies must 
have received such a letter may easily be imagined. They 
were better able than any others to judge of the probity and 
honour of the writer who had lived among them so long : 
and no doubt all these storms raging about, the injurious 
and insulting imputations, all the evil tongues of Rome let 
loose upon the harmless house, their privacy invaded, their 



v.] PAULA. 77 

quiet disturbed, must, during the whole course of the deplor- 
able incident, have been the cause of pain and trouble un- 
speakable to the gentle society on the Aventine. Marcella 
it is evident had done what she could to stop the mouth of 
Jerome when the trouble began ; it is perhaps for this reason 
that the letter of farewell is addressed to the older Asella, 
perhaps a milder judge. 

Paula's preparations had begun before Jerome had as yet 
thought of his more abrupt departure. They were not so 
easily made as those of a solitary already detached from the 
world. She had all her family affairs to regulate, and, what 
was harder still, her children to part with, the most difficult 
of all, and the special point in her conduct with which it is 
impossible for us to sympathise. But it must be remem- 
bered that Paula, a spotless matron, had been branded with 
the most shameful of slanders, that she had been shrieked at 
by the crowd as the slayer of her daughter, and accused by 
society of having dishonoured her name. She had been the 
subject of a case of libel, as we should say, before the public 
courts, and though the slanderer had confessed his falsehood 
(under the influence of torture it would seem, according to 
the words of Jerome), the imputation, as in most cases, re- 
mained. Outraged and wounded to the quick, it is very 
possible that she may have thought that it was well for her 
younger children that she should leave them, that they 
might not remain under the wing of a mother whose name 
had been bandied about in the mouths of men. Her 
daughter Paulina was by this time married to the good and 
faithful Pammachius, whose protection might be of greater 
advantage to the younger girl and boy than her own. And 
Paula had full knowledge of the tender mercies of her pagan 
relations, and of the influence they were likely to exercise 
against her, even in her own house. The staid young 
Eustochium, grave and calm, clung to her mother's side, her 
youthful head already covered by the veil of the dedicated 



78 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

virgin, a serene and unfaltering figure in the midst of all 
the agitations of the parting. All Rome poured forth to 
accompany them to the port, brothers and sisters with their 
wives and husbands, relations less near, a crowd of friends. 
All the way along the winding banks of the Tiber they plied 
Paula with entreaties and reproaches and tears. She made 
them no reply. She was at all times slow to speak, as the 
tender chronicle reports. " She raised her eyes to heaven, 
pious towards her children but more pious to God." She re- 
tained her self-command until the vessel began to move from 
the shore, where little Toxotius, the boy of ten years old, 
stood stretching out his hands to her in a last appeal, his 
sister Pufina silent, with wistful eyes, by his side. Paula's 
heart was like to burst. She turned her eyes away unable 
to bear that cruel sight, while Eustochium, firm and stead- 
fast, supported her weaker mother in her arms. 

Was it a cruel desertion, a heartless abandonment of duty? 
Who can tell ? There are desertions, cruelties in this kind, 
which are the highest sacrifice, and sometimes the most bit- 
ter proof of self-devotion. Did Paula in her heart believe, 
most painful thought that can enter a mother's mind, that 
her boy would be better without her, brought up in peace 
among his uncles and guardians, who, had she been there, 
would have made his life a continual struggle between two 
sides ? Was Pufina more likely to be happy in her gentle 
sister's charge, than with her mind disturbed, and perhaps 
her marriage spoiled, by her mother's religious vows, and 
all that was involved in them ? She might be wrong in 
thinking so, as we are all wrong often in our best and most 
painfully pondered plans. But condemnation is very easy, 
and gives so little trouble — there is surely a word to be 
said on the other side of the question. 

^When these pilgrims leave Pome they cease to have any 
part in the story of the great city with which we have to 
do. Yet their after-fate may be stated in a few words. No 



v.] PAULA. 79 

need to follow the great lady in her journey over land and 
sea to the Holy Land with all its associations, where Jeru- 
salem out of her ruins, decked with a new classic name, was 
already rising again into the knowledge and the veneration 
of the world. These were not the days of excursion trains 
and steamers, it is true; but the number of pilgrims ever 
coming and going to those more than classic shores, those 
holy places, animated with every higher hope, was perhaps 
greater in proportion to the smaller size and less popula- 
tion of the known world than are our many pilgrimages 
now, though this seems so strange a thing to say. But is 
there not a Murray, a Baedeker, of the fourth century, still 
existent, the Itineraire cle Bordeaux d, Jerusalem, unques- 
tioned and authentic, containing the most careful account 
of inns and places of refuge and modes of travel for the 
pilgrims? It is possible that the lady Paula may have 
had that ancient roll in her satchel, or slung about the 
shoulders of her attendant for constant reference. Her 
ship was occupied by her own party alone, and conveyed, 
no doubt, much baggage and many provisions as an emi- 
gration for life would naturally do; and it was hindered 
by no storms, as far as we hear, but only by a great calm 
which delayed the vessel much and made the voyage te- 
dious, necessitating the use of the galley's oars, which very 
likely the ladies would like best, though it kept them so 
many more days upon the sea. They reached Cyprus at 
last, that holy island now covered with monasteries, where 
Epiphanins, once Paula's guest in Rome, awaited and re- 
ceived her with every honour, and where there were many 
visits to be paid to monks and nuns in their new establish- 
ments, the favourite dissipation of the cloister. The ladies 
afterwards continued their voyage to Antioch, where they 
met Jerome ; and proceeded on their journey, having proba- 
bly had enough of the sea, along the coast by Tyre and 
Sidon, by Herod's splendid city of Csesarea, and Joppa 



80 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

with its memories of the Apostles — not without a thought 
of Andromeda and her monster as they looked over the 
dark and dangerous reefs which still scare the traveller: 
for they loved literature, notwithstanding their separation 
from the world. They formed by this time a great cara- 
vanserai, not unlike, to tell the truth, one of those parties 
which we are so apt to despise, under charge of guides and 
attendants who wear the livery of Cook. But such an expe- 
dition was far more dignified and important in those dis- 
tant days. Jerome and his monks made but one family of 
sisters and brothers with the Roman ladies and their fol- 
lowers, who endured so bravely all the fatigues and dangers 
of the way. Paula the pilgrim was no longer a tottering 
fine lady, but the most animated and interested of travel- 
lers, with no mere mission of hermit-hunting like Melania, 
but the truest human enthusiasm for all the storied scenes 
through which she passed. When they reached Jerusalem 
she went in a rapture of tears and exaltation from one to 
another of the sacred sites, kissing the broken stone which 
was supposed to have been that which was rolled against 
the door of the Holy Sepulchre, and following with pious 
awe and joy the steps of Helena into the cave where the 
True Cross was found. The legend was still fresh in those 
days, and doubts there were none. The enthusiasm of Paula, 
the rapture and exaltation, which found vent in torrents of 
tears, in ecstasies of sacred emotion, joy and prayer, moved 
all the city, thronged with pilgrims, devout and otherwise, 
to whom the great Roman lady was a wonder: the crowd 
followed her about from point to point, marvelling at her 
devotion and the warmth of natural feeling which in all 
circumstances distinguished her. The reader cannot but 
follow still with admiring interest a figure so fresh, so 
unconventional, so profoundly touched by all those holy 
and sacred associations. Amid so many who are repre- 
sented as almost more abstracted among spiritual thoughts 



v.] PAULA. 81 

than nature permits, her frank emotion and tender, natural 
enthusiasm are always a refreshment and a charm. 

We come here upon a break in the hitherto redundant 
story. Melania and Eufinus were in possession of their con- 
vents, and fully established as residents on the Mount of 
Olives, when the other pilgrims arrived ; and there can be 
but little doubt that every grace of hospitality was extended 
by the one Eoman lady to the other, as well as by the old 
companions of Jerome to her friend. But in the course of 
the after-years these dear friends quarrelled bitterly, not on 
personal matters, so far as appears, but on points of doctrine, 
and fell into such prolonged warfare of angry and stinging- 
words as hurt more than blows. By means of this very 
intimacy they knew everything that had ever been said or 
whispered of each other, and in the heat of conflict did not 
hesitate to use every old insinuation, every suggestion that 
could hurt or wound. The struggle ran so high that the 
after-peace of both parties was seriously affected by it ; and 
one of its most significant results was that Jerome, a man 
great enough and little enough for anything, either in the 
way of spitefulness or magnanimity, cut off from his letters 
and annals all mention of this early period of peace, and all 
reference to Melania, whom he is supposed to have praised 
so highly in his first state of mind that it became impossible 
in his second to permit these expressions of amity to be con- 
nected with her name. This is a melancholy explanation 
of the silence which falls over the first period of Paula's 
residence in Palestine, but it is a very natural one : and 
both sides were equally guilty. The quarrel happened, 
however, years after the first visit, which we have every 
reason to' believe was all friendliness and peace. 

After this first pause at Jerusalem, the caravanserai got 
under way again and set out on a long journey through' all 
the scenes of the Old Testament, the storied deserts and 
ruins of Syria, not much less ancient to the view and much 



82 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

less articulate than now. This was in the year 387, two 
years after their departure from Rome. Even now, with all 
our increased facilities for travel — neutralised as they are 
by the fact that these wild and desert lands will probably 
never be adapted to modern methods — the journey would be 
a very long and fatiguing business. Jerome and his party 
" went everywhere," as we should say ; they were daunted 
by no difficulties. No modern lady in deer-stalker's costume 
could have shrunk less from any dangerous road than the 
once fastidious Paula. They stopped everywhere, receiv- 
ing the ready hospitality of the convents in every awful 
pass of the rocks and stony waste where such homes of pen- 
ance were planted. Those' wildernesses of ruin, from which 
our own explorers have picked carefully out some tradition 
of Gilgal or of Ziklag, some Philistine stronghold or Jew- 
ish city of refuge — were surveyed by these adventurers 
fourteen hundred years ago, when perhaps there was greater 
freshness of tradition, but none of the aids of science to de- 
cipher what would seem even more hoary with age to them 
than it does to us. How trifling in our pretences at explora- 
tion do the luxurious parties of the nineteenth century seem, 
abstracted from common life for a few months at the most, 
and with all the resources of civilisation to fall back upon, 
in comparison with that of these patient wanderers, eating 
the Arab bread and clotted milk, and such fare as was to be 
got at, finding shelter among the dark-skinned ascetics of 
the desert communities, taking refuge in the cave which 
some saint but a day or two before had inhabited, wander- 
ing everywhere, over primeval ruin and recent shrine ! 

When they came back from these savage wildernesses to 
green Bethlehem standing up on its hillside over the pleas- 
ant fields, the calm and sweetness of the place went to 
their hearts. It was in this sacred spot that they decided 
to settle themselves, building their two convents, Jerome's 
upon the hill near the western gate, Paula's upon the smil- 



v.] PAULA. 83 

ing level below. He is said to have sold all that he had, 
some remains of personal property in Dalmatia belonging 
to himself and his brother, who was his faithful and con- 
stant companion, to provide for the expenses of the building, 
on his side ; and no doubt the abundant wealth of Paula sup- 
plemented all that was wanting. Gradually a conventual 
settlement, such as was the ideal of the time, gathered in 
this spot. After her own convent was finished Paula built 
two others near it, which were soon filled with dedicated 
sisters. And she built a hospice for the reception of trav- 
ellers, so that, as she said with tender smiles and tears, 
"If Joseph and Mary should return to Bethlehem, they 
might be sure of finding room for them in the inn." This 
soft speech shines like a gleam of tender light upon the 
little holy city with all its memories, showing us the great 
lady of old in her gracious kindness, full of noble natural 
kindness, and seeing in every poor pilgrim who passed 
that way some semblance of that simple pair, who carried 
the Light of the World to David's little town among the 
hills. 

All these homes of piety and charity are swept away, 
and no tradition even of their site is left; but there is one 
storied chamber that remains full of the warmest interest 
of all. It is the rocky room, in one of the half caves, half 
excavations close to that of the Nativity, and communicat- 
ing with it by rudely hewn stairs and passages, in which 
Jerome established himself while his convent was building, 
which he called his Paradise, and which is for ever associ- 
ated with the great work completed there. All other tra- 
ditions and memories grow dim in the presence of the great 
and sacred interest of the place. Yet it will be impossible 
even there for the spectator who knows their story to stand 
unmoved in the scene, practically unaltered since their day, 
where Jerome laboured at his great translation, and Paula 
and Eustochium copied, compared, and criticised his daily 



84 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

labours. A great part of the Vulgate had been completed 
in Borne, but since leaving that city Jerome had much 
increased his knowledge of Hebrew, losing no opportunity, 
during his travels, of studying the language with every 
learned Kabbi he encountered, and acquiring much infor- 
mation in respect to the views and readings of the doctors 
in the law. He took the opportunity of his retirement at 
Bethlehem to revise what was already done and to finish 
the work, His two friends had both learned Hebrew in a 
greater or less degree before leaving Eome. They had no 
doubt, shared his studies on the way. They read with him 
daily a portion of the Scriptures in the original; and it was 
at their entreaty and with their help that he began the 
translation of the Psalms, so deeply appropriate to this 
scene, in which the voice of the shepherd of Bethlehem 
could almost be heard, singing as he led his flock about the 
little hills. I quote from M. Amedee Thierry a sympa- 
thetic description of the method of this work as it was 
carried out in the rocky chamber at Bethlehem, or in the 
convent close by. 

His two friends charged themselves with the task of collecting all 
the materials, and this edition, prepared by their care, is that which 
remains in the Church under Jerome's name. We have his own in- 
structions to them for this work, even to the lines traced for greater 
exactness, and the explanation of the signs which he had adopted in 
the collation of the different versions with his text, sometimes a line 
underscored, sometimes an obelisk or asterisk. A comma followed 
by two points indicated the cutting out of superfluous words coming 
from some paraphrase of the Septuagint ; a star followed by two points 
showed, on the contrary, where passages had to be inserted from the 
Hebrew ; another mark denoted passages borrowed from the transla- 
tion of Theodosius, slightly different from the Septuagint as to the 
simplicity of the language. In reading these various symbols it is 
pleasant to think of the two noble Roman ladies seated before the vast 
desk upon which were spread the numerous manuscripts, Greek, He- 
brew, and Latin — the Hebrew text of the Bible, the different editions 
of the Septuagint, the Hexapla of Origen, Theodosius, Symmachus, 
Aquila, and the Italian Vulgate — whilst they examined and compared, 
reducing to order under their hands, with piety and joy, that Psalter 
of St. Jerome which we still sing, at least the greater part of it, in the 
Latin Church at the present day. 



v.] PAULA. 85 

It is indeed a touching association with that portion of 
Scripture which next to the Gospel is most dear to the 
devout, that the translation still in daily use throughout 
the churches of Continental Europe, the sonorous and noble 
words which amid all the babble of different tongues still 
form a large universal language, of which all have at least 
a conventional understanding — should have been thus 
transcribed and perfected for the use of the generations. 
Jerome is no gentle hero, and, truth to tell, has never been 
much loved in the Church which yet owes so much to him. 
Yet there is no other work of the kind which carries with 
it so many soft and tender associations. The cave at Beth- 
lehem is as little adapted as a scene for that domestic com- 
bination as Jerome is naturally adapted to be its centre. 
And no doubt there are unkindly critics who will describe 
this austere yet beautiful interior as the workshop of two 
poor female slaves dragged after him by the tyranny of 
their grim taskmaster to do his work for him. No such 
idea is consistent with the record. The gentle Paula was 
a woman of high spirit as well as of much grace and cour- 
tesy, steadfastness and humour, the last the most unusual 
quality of all. The imaginative devotion which had in- 
duced her to learn Hebrew in order to sing the Psalmist's 
songs in the original, among the little band of Souls, under 
Marcella's gilded roof, had its natural evolution in the 
gentle pressure laid upon Jerome to make of them an 
authoritative translation : and where could so fit a place for 
this work have been found as in the delightful rest after 
their travels were over, in the very scene where these 
sacred songs were first begun? It would be almost as 
impertinent and foolish to suppose that any modern doubt 
of their authenticity existed in Paula's mind as to suggest 
that these were forced and dreary labours to which she was 
driven by a spiritual tyrant. To our mind this mutual 
labour and study adds the last charm to their companion- 



80 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

ship. The sprightly, gentle woman who shed so much 
light over that curious self-denying yet self-indulgent life, 
and the grave young daughter who never left her side, 
whose gentle shadow is one with her, so that while Paula 
lived we cannot distinguish them apart — must have found 
a quiet happiness above all they had calculated on in this 
delightful intercourse and work. Their minds and thoughts 
occupied by the charm of noble poetry, by the puzzle of 
words to be cleared and combined aright, and by constant 
employment in a matter which interested them so deeply, 
which is perhaps the best of all — must have drawn closer 
and ever closer, mother to child, and child to mother, as 
well as both to the friend and father whom they delighted 
to serve, and whose large intellect and knowledge kept 
theirs going in constant sympathy — not unmingled with 
now and then a little opposition, and the pleasant stir of 
independent opinion. 

It is right to give Jerome himself, so fierce in quarrel 
and controversy, the advantage of this gentle lamp which 
burns for ever in his little Paradise. And can any one 
suppose that Paula, once so sensitive and exquisite, now 
strong and vigorous in the simplicity of that retirement, 
with her hands full and her mind, plenty to think of, plenty 
to do, had not her advantage also ? The life would be ideal 
but for the thought that must have come over her by times, 
of the young ones left in Rome, and what was happening to 
them. She was indeed prostrated by grief again and again 
by the death of her daughters there, one after another, and 
mourned with a bitterness which makes us wonder whether 
that haunting doubt and self-censure, which perhaps gave 
an additional sting to her sorrow in the case of Blgesilla, 
may not have overwhelmed her heart again though on a 
contrary ground — the doubt whether perhaps the austerities 
she enjoined and shared had been fatal to one, the contra- 
dictory doubt whether to leave them to the usual course of 



V'] 



PAULA. 



87 



life might not have been fatal to the others. Such a woman 
has none of the self-confidence which steels so many against 
fate — and, finding nothing effectual for the safety of those 
she loved, neither a sacred dedication nor that consent to 
commonplace happiness which is the ordinary ideal of a 
mother's duty, might well sometimes fall into despair — a 
despair silently shared by many a trembling heart in all 




FROM THE AVENTINE. 



ages, which finds its best-laid plans, though opposite to each 
other, fall equally into downfall and dismay. 

But she had her compensations. She had her little glory, 
too, in the books which went forth from that seclusion in 
Bethlehem, bearing her name, inscribed to her and her child 
by the greatest writer of the time. "You, Paula and Eu- 
stochium, who have studied so deeply the books of the 
Hebrews, take it, this book of Esther, and test it word by 
word; you can tell whether anything is added, anything 



88 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [ch. v. 

withdrawn : and can bear faithful witness whether I have 
rendered aright in Latin this Hebrew history." Few 
women would despise such a tribute, and fewer still the 
place of these two women in the Paradise of that laborious 
study, and at the doors of that beautiful Hospice on the 
Jerusalem road, where Joseph and Mary had they but come 
again would have run no risk of finding room! 

They died all three, one after another, and were laid to 
rest in the pure and wholesome rock near the sacred spot of 
the Nativity. There is a touching story told of how Eu- 
stochium, after her mother's death, when Jerome was over- 
whelmed with grief and unable to return to any of his 
former occupations, came to him with the book of Ruth still 
untranslated in her hand, at once a promise and an entreaty. 
" Where thou goest I will go. Where thou dwellest I will 
dwell " — and a continuation at the same time of the blessed 
work which kept their souls alive, 




THE CAPITOL FROM THE PALATINE, 



CHAPTEE VI. 



THE MOTHER HOUSE. 

AMID all these changes the house on the Aventine — the 
mother house as it would be called in modern parlance 
— went on in busy quiet, no longer visible in that fierce light 
which beats upon the path of such a man as Jerome, doing 
its quiet work steadily, having a hand in many things, most 
of them beneficent, which went on in Rome. Albina the 
mother of Marcella, and Asella her elder sister, died in 
peace : and younger souls, with more stirring episodes of 
life, disturbed and enlivened the peace of the cloister, which 
yet was no cloister but open to all the influences of life, 
maintaining a large correspondence and much and varied 
intercourse with the society of the times. In the first fer- 
vour of the settlement in Bethlehem both Paula and Jerome 



90 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

(she by his hand) wrote to Marcella urging her to join them, 
to forsake the world in a manner more complete than she 
had yet done. "... You were the first to kindle the 
fire in us " (the letter is nominally from Paula and Eusto- 
chium) : " the first by precept and example to urge us to 
adopt our present life. As a hen gathers her chickens, who 
fear the hawk and tremble at every shadow of a bird, so 
did you take us under your wing. And will you now let us 
fly about at random with no mother near us? " 

This letter is full not only of affectionate entreaties but 
of delightful pictures of their own retired and peaceful 
life. "How shall I describe to you," the writer says, "the 
little cave of Christ, the hostel of Mary ? Silence is more 
respectful than words, which are inadequate to speak its 
praise. There are no lines of noble colonnades, no walls 
decorated by the sweat of the poor and the labour of con- 
victs, no gilded roofs to intercept the sky. Behold in this 
poor crevice of the earth, in a fissure of the rock, the builder 
of the firmament was born." She goes on with touching 
eloquence to put forth every argument to move her friend. 

Read the Apocalypse of St. John and see there what he says of the 
woman clothed in scarlet, on whose forehead is written blasphemy, 
and of her seven hills, and many waters, and the end of Babylon. 
"Come out of her, my people," the Lord says, "that ye be not par- 
takers of her sins. : ' There is indeed there a holy Church ; there are 
the trophies of apostles and martyrs, the true confession of Christ, the 
faith preached by the apostles, and heathendom trampled under foot, 
and the name of Christian every day raising itself on high. But its 
ambition, its power, the greatness of the city, the need of seeing and 
being seen, of greeting and being greeted, of praising and detracting, 
hearing or talking, of seeing, even against one's will, all the crowds of 
the world — these things are alien to the monastic profession and they 
have spoiled Rome, they all oppose an insurmountable obstacle to the 
quiet of the true monk. People visit you: if you open your doors, 
farewell to silence : if you close them, you are proud and unfriendly. 
If you return their politeness, it is through proud portals, through a 
host of grumbling insolent lackeys. But in the cottage of Christ all is 
simple, all is rustic : except the Psalms, all is silence : no frivolous 
talk disturbs you, the ploughman sings Allelujah as he follows his 
plough, the reaper covered with sweat refreshes himself with chanting 
a psalm, and it is David who supplies with a song the vine dresser 



vi.] THE MOTHER HOUSE. 91 

among his vineyards. These are the songs of the country, its ditties 
of love, played upon the shepherd's flute. Will the time never come 
when a breathless courier will bring us the good news, your Marcella 
has landed in Palestine ? What a cry of joy among the choirs of the 
monks, among all the bands of the virgins ! In our excitement we wait 
for no carriage but go on foot to meet you, to clasp your hand, to look 
upon your face. When will the day come when we shall enter together 
the birthplace of Christ : when, leaning over the divine sepulchre, we 
weep with a sister, a mother, when our lips touch together the sacred 
wood of the Cross : when on the Mount of Olives our hearts and souls 
rise together in the rising of our Lord ? Would not you see Lazarus 
coming out of his tomb, bound in his shroud ? and the waters of Jor- 
dan purified for the washing of the Lord ? Then we shall hasten to 
the shepherds' folds, and pray at the tomb of David. Listen, it is the 
prophet Amos blowing his shepherd's horn from the height of his rock ; 
we shall see the monuments of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the 
three famous women, and Samaria and Nazareth, the flower of Galilee, 
and Shiloh and Bethel and other holy places, accompanied by Christ, 
where churches rise everywhere like standards of the victories of 
Christ. And when we return to our cavern we will sing together 
always, and sometimes we shall weep ; our hearts wounded with the 
arrow of the Lord, we will say one to another, "I have found Him 
whom my soul loveth ; I will hold Him, and will not let Him go ! " 

Similar words upon the happiness of rural life and retire- 
ment Jerome had addressed to Marcella before. He had 
warned her of the danger of the tumultuous sea of life, and 
how the frail bark, beaten by the waves, ought to seek the 
shelter of the port before the last hurricane breaks. The 
image was even more true than he imagined; but it was not 
of the perils of Rome in the dreadful time of war and siege 
which was approaching that he spoke, but of the usual 
dangers of common life to the piety of the recluse. " The 
port which we offer you, it is the solitude of the fields," 
he says : 

Brown bread, herbs watered by our own hands, and milk, the dain- 
tiest of the country, supply our rustic feasts. We have no fear of 
drowsiness in prayer or heaviness in our readings, on such fare. In 
summer we seek the shade of our trees ; in autumn the mild weather 
and pure air invite us to rest on a bed of fallen leaves ; in spring, when 
the fields are painted with flowers, we sing our psalms among the birds. 
When winter comes, with its chills and snows, the wood of the nearest 
forest supplies our fire. Let Rome keep her tumults, her cruel arena, 
her mad circus, her luxurious theatres ; let the senate of matrons pay 
its daily visits. It is good for us to cleave to the Lord and to put all 
our hope in Him. 



92 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

But Marcella turned a deaf ear to these entreaties. Per- 
haps she still loved the senate of matrons, the meetings of 
the Souls, the irruption of gentle visitors, the murmur of 
all the stories of Borne, and the delicate difficulties of mar- 
riage and re-marriage brought to her for advice and guid- 
ance. The allusions in both these letters point to such a 
conclusion, and there is no reason why it should not have 
been so. The Superior of a convent has in this fashion in 
much later days fulfilled more important uses than the 
gentle nun of the fields. At all events this lady remained 
in her home, her natural place, and continued to pour forth 
her bounty upon the poor of her native city : which many 
would agree was perhaps the better, though it certainly was 
not the safer, way. The death of her mother, which made 
a change in her life, and might have justified a still greater 
breaking up of all old customs and ties, was perhaps the 
occasion of these affectionate arguments; but Marcella 
would herself be no longer young and in a position much 
resembling that of a mother in her own person, the trusted 
friend of many in Eome, and their closest tie to a more 
spiritual and better life. The light of such a guest as 
Jerome, attracting all eyes to the house and bringing it 
within the records of literary history, that sole mode of 
saving the daily life of a household from oblivion — had 
indeed died away, leaving life perhaps a little flat and 
blank, certainly much less agitated and visible to the outer 
world than when he was pouring forth fire and flame upon 
every adversary from within the shelter of its peaceful 
walls. But no other change had happened in the circum- 
stances under which Marcella opened her palace to a few 
consecrated sisters, and made it a general oratory and place 
of pious counsel and retreat for the ladies of Borne. The 
same devout readings, the same singing of psalms (some- 
times in the original), the same life of mingled piety and 
intellectualism must have gone on as before : and other fine 



vi.J THE MOTHER HOUSE. 93 

ladies perhaps not less interesting than Paula must have 
sought with their confessions and confidences the ear of the 
experienced woman, who as Paula says in respect to herself 
and her daughters, " first carried the sparkle of light to our 
hearts, and collected us like chickens under your wing." 
She was the same, "our gentle, our sweet Marcella, sweeter 
than honey," open to every charity and kindness : not refus- 
ing, it would seem, to visit as well as to be visited, and 
willing to " live the life " without forsaking any ordinary 
bonds or traditions of existence. There is less to tell of 
her for this reason, but not perhaps less to praise. 

Marcella had her share no doubt in forming the minds 
of the two younger spirits, vowed from their cradle to the 
perfect life of virginhoocl, the second Paula, daughter of 
Toxotius and his Christian wife ; and the younger Melania, 
daughter also of the son whom his mother had abandoned as 
an infant. It is a curious answer to the stern virtue which 
reproaches these two Roman ladies with the cruel desertion 
of their children, to find that both those children, grown 
men, permitted or encouraged the vocation of their daugh- 
ters, and were proud of the saintly renown of the mothers 
who had left them to their fate. The consecrated daughters 
however leave only a faint trace as of two spotless catechu- 
mens in the story. Incidents of a more exciting character 
broke now and then the calm of life in the palace on the 
Aventine. M. Thierry in his life of Jerome gives us per- 
haps a sketch too entertaining of Fabiola, one of the ladies 
more or less associated with the house of Marcella, a con- 
stant visitor, a penitent by times, an enthusiast in charity, 
a woman bent on making, or so it seemed, the best of both 
worlds. She had made early what for want of a better 
expression we may call a love match, in which she had been 
bitterly disappointed. That a divorce should follow was 
both natural and lawful in the opinion of the time, and 
Fabiola had already formed a new attachment and made 



94 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

haste to many again. But the second marriage was a dis- 
appointment even greater than the first, and this repeated 
failure seems to have confused and excited her mind to 
issues by no means clear at first, probably even to herself. 
She made in the distraction of her life a sudden and unan- 
nounced visit to Paula's convent at Bethlehem, where she 
was a welcome and delightful visitor, carrying with her 
all the personal news that cannot be put into writing, and 
the gracious ways of an accomplished woman of the world. 
She is supposed to have had a private object of her own 
under this visit of friendship, but the atmosphere and occu- 
pations of the place must have overawed Fabiola, and though 
her object was hidden in an artful web of fiction she was 
not bold enough to reveal it, either to the stern Jerome or 
the mild Paula. What she did was to make herself delight- 
ful to both in the little society upon which we have so many 
side-lights, and which doubtless, though so laborious and 
full of privations, was a very delightful society, none better, 
with such a man as Jerome, full of intellectual power, and 
human experience, at its head, and ladies of the highest 
breeding like Paula and her daughter to regulate its simple 
habits. We are told of one pretty scene where — amid 
the talk which no doubt ran upon the happiness of that 
peaceful life amid the pleasant fields where the favoured 
shepherds heard the angels' song — there suddenly rose the 
voice of the new-comer reciting with the most enchanting 
flattery a certain famous letter which Jerome long before 
had written to his friend Heliodorus and which had been 
read in all the convents and passed from hand to hand as 
a chef d'oeuvre of literary beauty and sacred enthusiasm. 
Fabiola, quick and adroit and emotional, had learned it by 
heart, and Jerome would have been more than man had he 
not felt the charm of such flattery. 

For a moment the susceptible Roman seems to have felt 
that she had attained the haven of peace after her disturbed 



vi.] THE MOTHER HOUSE. 95 

and agitated life. Her hand was full and her heart gener- 
ous : she spread her charities far and wide among poor pil- 
grims and poor residents with that undoubting liberality 
which considered almsgiving as one of the first of Christian 
duties. But whether the little busy society palled after a 
time, or whether it was the great scare of the rumour that 
the Huns were coming that frightened Fabiola, we cannot 
tell, nor precisely how long her stay was. Her coming and 
going were at least within the space of two years. She 
was not made to settle down to the revision of manuscripts 
like her friends, though she had dipped like them into 
Hebrew and had a pretty show of knowledge. She would 
seem to have evidenced this however more by curious and 
somewhat frivolous questions than by any assistance given 
in the work which was going on. Nothing could be more 
kind, more paternal, than Jerome to the little band of 
women round him. He complains, it is true, that Fabiola 
sometimes propounded problems and did not wait for an 
answer, and that occasionally he had to reply that he did 
not know, when she puzzled him with this rapid stream of 
inquiry. But it is evident also that he did his best sin- 
cerely to satisfy her curiosity as if it had been the sincerest 
thing in the world. For instance, she was seized with a 
desire to know the symbolical meaning of the costume of 
the high priest among the Jews : and to gratify this desire 
Jerome occupied a whole night in dictating to one of his 
scribes a little treatise on the subject, which probably the 
fine lady scarcely took time to read. Nothing can be more 
characteristic than the indications of this bright and charm- 
ing visitor, throwing out reflections of all that was going 
on round her, so brilliant that they seemed better than the 
reality, fluttering upon the surface of their lives, bringing 
all under her spell. 

There seems but little ground however for the supposition 
of M. Thierry that it was in the interest of Fabiola that 



96 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

Amandus, a priest in Rome, wrote a letter laying before 
Jerome a case of conscience, that of a woman who had 
divorced her husband and married again, and who now was 
troubled in her mind as to her duty; whether the second 
husband was wholly unlawful, and whether she could 
remain in full communion with the Church, having made 
this marriage? If she was the person referred to no one 
has been able to divulge what the question meant — whether 
she had a third marriage in her mind, or if a wholly 
unnecessary fit of compunction had seized her; for as a 
matter of fact she had never been subjected by the Church 
to any pains or penalties in consequence of her second mar- 
riage. Jerome however, as might have been expected of 
him, gave forth no uncertain sound in his reply. Accord- 
ing to the Church, he said, there could be but one husband, 
the first. Whatever had been his unworthiness, to replace 
him by another was to live in sin. Whether it was this 
answer which decided her action, or whether she had been 
moved by the powerful fellowship of Bethlehem to renounce 
the more agitating course of worldly life, at least it is cer- 
tain that Fabiola's career was changed from this time. 
Perhaps it was her desire to shake off the second husband 
which moved her. At all events on her return to Rome she 
announced to the bishop that she felt herself guilty of a 
great sin, and that she desired to make public penance for 
the same. 

Accordingly on the eve of Easter, when the penitents 
assembled under the porch of the great Church of St. John 
Lateran, amid all the wild and haggard figures appearing 
there, murderers and criminals of all kinds, the delicate 
Fabiola, with her hair hanging about her shoulders, ashes 
on her head and on the dark robe that covered her, her face 
pale with fasting and tears, stood among them, a sight for 
the world. Under many aspects had all Rome seen this 
daughter of the great Fabian race, in the splendour of her 



VI.] 



THE MOTHER HOUSE. 



97 



worldly espousals, and at all the great spectacles and enter- 
tainments of a city given up to display and amusement. 
Her jewels, her splendid dresses, her fine equipages, were 
well known. With what curiosity would all her old admir- 
ers, her rivals in splendour, those who had envied her lux- 
ury and high place, gather to see her now in her voluntary 
humiliation, descending to the level of the very lowest as 
she had hitherto been on the very highest apex of society ! 




SAN BARTOLOMMIO. 



All Rome we are told was there, gazing, wondering, tracing 
her movements under the portico, among these unaccustomed 
companions. Perhaps there might be a supreme fantastic 
satisfaction to the penitent — with that craving for sensa- 
tion which the exhaustion of all kinds of triumphs and 
pleasures brings — ■ in thus stepping from one extreme to the 
other, a gratification in the thought that Rome which had 
worshipped her beauty and splendour was now gazing aghast 
at her bare feet and dishevelled hair. One can have no 



98 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

doubt of the sensation experienced by the Tota urbe spec- 
tante Bomana. It was worth while frequenting religious 
ceremonies when such a sight was possible ! Fabiola, — 
once with mincing steps, and gorgeous liveried servants on 
either hand, descending languidly the great marble steps 
from her palace to the gilded carriage in which she sank 
fatigued when that brief course was over, the mitella blazing 
with gold upon her head, her robe woven with all the tints 
of the rainbow into metallic splendour of gold and silver 
threads. And now to see her amid that crowd of ruffians 
from the Campagna, and unhappy women from the purlieus 
of the city, her splendid head uncovered, her thin hands 
crossed in the rough sleeves of the penitent's gown! It 
might be to some perhaps a salutary sight — moving other 
great ladies with heavier sins on their heads than Fabiola' s 
to feel the prickings of remorse; though no doubt it is 
equally possible that they might think they saw through 
her, and the new form of self -exhibition which attracted all 
the world to gaze. We are not told whether Fabiola found 
refuge in the house on the Aventine with Marcella, who 
had lit the fire of Christian faith in her heart as well as in 
that of Paula : or whether she remained, like Marcella, in 
her own house, making it another centre of good works. 
But at all events her life from this moment was entirely 
given up to charity and spiritual things. Her kinsfolk and 
noble neighbours still more or less Pagan, were filled with 
fury and indignation and that sharp disgust at the loss of 
so much good money to the world, which had so much to 
do in embittering opposition: but the Christians were deeply 
impressed, the homage of such a great lady to the faith, 
and her recantation of her errors affecting many as a true 
martyrdom. 

If it was really compunction for the sin of the second 
marriage which so moved her, her position would much 
resemble that of the fine fleur of French society as at present 



vi.] THE MOTHER HOUSE. 99 

constituted, in its tremendous opposition to the law of 
divorce, now lawful in Trance of the nineteenth century as 
it was in Borne of the fourth — but resisted with a splendid 
bigotry of feeling, altogether independent of morality or 
even of reason, by all that is noblest in the country. 
Fabiola's divorce had been perfectly lawful and according 
to all the teaching and traditions of her time. The Church 
had as yet uplifted no voice against it. She had not been 
shut out from the society even of the most pious, or con- 
demned to any penance or deprivation. Not even Jerome 
(till forced to give a categorical answer), nor that purest 
circle of devout women at Bethlehem, had refused her any 
privilege. Her action was unique and unprecedented as a 
protest against the existing law uf the land, as well as uni- 
versal custom and tradition. We are not informed whether 
it had any lasting effect, or formed a precedent for other 
women. No doubt it encouraged the formation of the laws 
against divorce which originated in the Church itself but 
have held through the intervening ages a doubtful sway, 
broken on every side by Papal dispensations, until now that 
they have settled down into a bond of iron on the con- 
sciences of the devout — chiefly the women, more specially 
still the gentlewomen — of Catholic Europe, where as in 
Fabiola's time they are once more against the law of the 
land. 

The unworthy second husband we are informed had died 
even before Fabiola's public act of penitence; but no fur- 
ther movements towards the world, or the commoner ways 
of life reveal themselves in her future career. If she 
returned to life with the veiled head and bare feet of her 
penitence, or if she resumed, like Marcella, much of the 
ordinary traffic of society, we have no information. But 
she was the founder of the first public hospital in Borne, 
besides the usual monasteries, and built in concert with 
Pammachius a hospice at Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber, 



100 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

where strangers and travellers from all parts of the world 
were received, probably on the model of that hospice for 
pilgrims which Paula had established. And she was her- 
self the foremost nurse in her own hospital, shrinking from 
no office of charity. The Church has always and in all cir- 
cumstances encouraged such practical acts of self-devotion. 
The ladies of the Aventine and all the friends of Jerome 
had been disturbed a little before by the arrival of a 
stranger in Rome, also a pretended friend of Jerome, and 
at first very willing to shelter himself under that title, 
Rufinus, who brought with him — after a moment of delu- 
sive amiability during which he had almost deceived the 
very elect themselves — a blast of those wild gales of polemi- 
cal warfare which had been echoing for some time with 
sacrilegious force and inappropriateness from the Mount of 
Olives itself. The excitement which he raised in Rome in 
respect to the doctrines of Origen caused much commotion 
in the community, which lived as much by news of the 
Church and reports of all that was going on in theology as 
by the daily bread of their charities and kindness. It was 
to Marcella that Jerome wrote, when, reports having been 
made to him of all that had happened, he exploded, with 
the flaming bomb of his furious rhetoric, the fictitious state- 
ments of Rufinus, by which he was made to appear a sup- 
porter of Origen. Into that hot and fierce controversy we 
have no need to enter. No one can study the life of Jerome 
without becoming acquainted with this episode and finding 
out how much the wrath of a Father of the Church is like 
the rage of other men, if not more violent; but happily as 
Rome was not the birthplace of this fierce quarrel it is quite 
immaterial to our subject or story. It filled the house of 
Marcella with trouble and doubt for a time, with indigna- 
tion afterwards when the facts of the controversy were 
better known; but interesting as it must have been to the 
eager theologians there, filling their halls with endless 



vi.] THE MOTHER HOUSE. 101 

discussions and alarms, lest this new agitation should 
interfere with the repose of their friend, it is no longer 
interesting except to the student now. Rufinus was finally 
unmasked, and condemned by the Bishop of Eome, chiefly 
by the exertions of Marcella, whom Oceanus, coining hot 
from the scene of the controversy, and Paulinian the 
brother of Jerome, had instructed in his true character. 
Events were many at this moment in that little Christian 
society. The tumult of controversy thus excited and all 
the heat and passion it brought with it had scarcely blown 
aside, when the ears of the Roman world were made to 
tingle with the wonderful story of Fabiola, and the crowd 
flew to behold in the portico of the Lateran her strange 
appearance as a penitent; and the commotion of that event 
had scarcely subsided when another wonderful incident 
appears in the contemporary history filling the house with 
lamentation and woe. 

The young Paulina, dear on all accounts to the ladies of 
the Aventine as her mother's daughter, and as her hus- 
band's wife (for Pammachius, the friend and schoolfellow 
of Jerome, was one of the fast friends and counsellors of 
the community), as well as for her own virtues, died in the 
flower of life and happiness, a rich and noble young matron 
exhibiting in her own home and amid the common duties 
of existence, all the noblest principles of the Christian faith. 
She had not chosen what these consecrated women con- 
sidered as the better way: but in her own method, and 
amid a world lying in wickedness, had unfolded that white 
flower of a blameless life which even monks and nuns were 
thankful to acknowledge as capable of existing here and 
there in the midst of worldly splendours and occupations. 
She left no children behind her, so that her husband Pam- 
machius was free of the anxieties and troubles, as well as 
of the joy and pride, of a family to regulate and provide 
for. His young wife left to him all her property on con- 



102 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap, 

dition that it should be distributed among the poor, and 
when he had fulfilled this bequest the sorrowful husband 
himself retired from life, and entered a convent, in obedi- 
ence to the strong impulse which swayed so many. Before 
this occurred however " all Rome " was roused by another 
great spectacle. The entire city was invited to the funeral 
of Paulina as if it had been to her marriage, though those 
who came were not the same wondering circles who crowded 
round the Lateran gate to see Fabiola in her humiliation. 
It was the poor of Rome who were called by sound of trum- 
pet in every street, to assemble around the great Church of 
St. Peter, where were those tombs of the Apostles which 
every Christian visited as the most sacred of shrines, and 
where Paulina was laid forth upon her bier, the mistress of 
the feast. The custom was an old one, and chambers for 
these funeral repasts were attached to the great catacombs 
and all places of burial. The funeral feast of Paulina how- 
ever meant more than ordinary celebrations of the kind, as 
the place in which it was held was more impressive and 
imposing than an ordinary sepulchre however splendid. 
She must have been carried through the streets in solemn 
procession, from the heights on which stood the palaces of 
her ancient race, across the bridge, and by the tomb of 
Hadrian to that great basilica where the Apostles lay, her 
husband and his friends following the bier : and in all like- 
lihood Marcella and her train were also there, replacing the 
distant mother. St. Peter's it is unnecessary to say was 
not the St. Peter's we know; but it was even then a great 
basilica, with wide extending porticoes and squares, and 
lofty roof, though the building was scarcely quite detached 
from the rock out of which the back part of the cathedral 
had been hewn. 

Many strange sights have been seen in that spot which 
once was the centre of the civilised world, and this which 
seems to us one of the strangest was in no way unusual or 



VI.] 



THE MOTHER HOUSE. 



103 



against the traditions of the age in which it occurred. The 
church itself, and all its surroundings, nave and aisles and 
porticoes, and the square beyond, were filled with tables, 
and to these from all the four quarters of Koine, from the 
circus and the benches of the Colosseum, where the wretched 
slept and lurked, from the sunny pavements, and all the 
dens and haunts of the poor by the side of the Tiber, the 
crowds poured, in those unconceivable yet picturesque rags 
which clothe the wretchedness of the South. They were 




ST. PETER'S, FROM THE JANICULUM. 



ushered solemnly to their seats, the awe of the place, let 
us hope, quieting the voices of a profane and degraded 
populace, and overpowering the whispering, rustling, many- 
coloured multitude. Outside the later comers would be 
more unrestrained, and the roar, even though subdued, of 
thronging humanity must have come in strangely to the 
silence of the great church, and of the mourners, bent upon 
doing Paulina honour in this curious way. Did she lie 
there uplifted on her high bier to receive her guests? Or 
was the heart-broken Pammachius the host, standing pale 
upon the steps, over the grave of the Apostles? When they 



104 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

were " saturated " with food and wine, the first assembly left 
their places and were succeeded by another, each as he 
went away receiving from the hands of Pammachius him- 
self a sum of money and a new garment. " Happy giver, 
unwearied distributor!" says the record. The livelong 
day ' this process went on ; a winter day in Borne, not 
always warm, not always genial, very cold outside in the 
square under the evening breeze, and no doubt growing 
more and more noisy as one band continued to succeed 
another, and the first fed lingered about comparing their 
gifts, and hoping perhaps for some remnants to be collected 
at the end from the abundant and oft-renewed meal. There 
were no doubts in anybody's mind, as we have said, about 
encouraging pauperism or demoralising the recipients of 
these gifts ; perhaps it would have been difficult to demoral- 
ise further that mendicant crowd. But one cannot help 
wondering how the peace was kept, whether there were 
soldiers or some manner of classical police about to keep 
order, or if the disgusted Senators would have to bestir 
themselves to prevent this wild Christian carnival of sor- 
row and charity from becoming a danger to the public 
peace. 

We are told that it was the sale of Paulina's jewels, and 
her splendid toilettes which provided the cost of this ex- 
traordinary funeral feast. "The beautiful dresses woven 
with threads of gold were turned into warm robes of wool 
to cover the naked; the gems that adorned her neck and her 
hair filled the hungry with good things." Poor Paulina! 
She had worn her finery very modestly according to all 
reports ; it had served no purposes of coquetry. The reader 
feels that something more congenial than that coarse and 
noisy crowd filling the church with its deformities and 
loathsomeness might have celebrated her burial. But not 
so was the feeling of the time; that they were more mis- 
erable than words could say, vile, noisome, and unclean, 



vi.] THE MOTHER HOUSE. 105 

formed their claim of right to all these gifts — a claim from 
which their noisy and rude profanity, their hoarse blas- 
phemy and ingratitude took nothing away. Charity was 
more robust in the early centuries than in our fastidious 
days. " If such had been all the feasts spread for thee by 
thy Senators," cried Bishop Paulinus, the historian of this 
episode, "oh Rome thou might'st have escaped the evils 
denounced against thee in the Apocalypse." We must 
remember that whatever might have been the opinion later, 
there was no doubt in any Christian mind in the fourth 
century that Rome was the Scarlet Woman of the Revela- 
tion of St. John, and that a dreadful fate was to overwhelm 
her luxury and pride. 

Pammachius, when he had fulfilled the wishes of his wife 
in this way, thrilling the hearts of the mourning mother and 
sister in Bethlehem with sad gratification, and edifying the 
anxious spectators on the Aventine, carried out her will to 
its final end by becoming a monk, but with the curious 
mixture of devotion and independence common at the time, 
retired to no cloister, but lived in his own house, fulfilling 
his duties, and appearing even in the Senate in the gown 
and cowl so unlike the splendid garb of the day. He was 
no doubt one of the members for the poor in that august 
but scarcely active assembly, and occupied henceforward all 
his leisure in works of charity and religious organisations, 
in building religious houses, and protecting Christians in 
every necessity of life. 

We have said that Rome in these days was as freely 
identified with the Scarlet Woman of the Apocalypse as 
ever was done by any Reformer or Puritan in later times. 
To Jerome she was as much Babylon, and as damnable and 
guilty in every way as if he had been an Orangeman or 
Covenanter. Mildness was not general either in speech or 
thought : it has seldom been so perhaps in religious contro- 
versy. It is curious indeed to mark how, so near the fount 



106 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

of Christianity, the Church had already come to rend itself 
with questions of doctrine, and expend on discussions of 
philosophical subtlety the force that was wanted for the 
moral advantage of the world. But that no doubt was one 
of the defects of the great principle of self-devotion which 
aimed at emptying the mind of everything worldly and 
practical, and fixing it entirely upon spiritual subjects, thus 
substituting them for the ruder obstacles which occupied in 
common life the ruder forces of nature. 

All things however were now moving swiftly towards one 
of the great catastrophes of the ages. Though Christianity 
was young, the entire system of the world's government 
was old and drawing towards its fall. Rome was dead, or 
virtually so, and all the old prestige, the old pride and pre- 
tension of her race, were perishing miserably in those last vul- 
garities of luxury and display which were all that was left to 
her. It is no doubt true that the crumbling of all common 
ties which took place within her bosom, under the invasion 
of the monkish missionaries from the East, and the influ- 
ence of Athanasius, Jerome, and others — had been for some 
time undermining her unity, and that the rent between that 
portion of the aristocracy of Rome which still held by the 
crumbling system of Paganism, and those who had adopted 
the new faith, was now complete. Rome which had been 
the seat of empire, the centre from which law and power 
had gone out over all the earth, the very impersonation of 
the highest forces of humanity, the pride of life, the emi- 
nence of family and blood — now saw her highest names 
subjected voluntarily to strange new laws of humiliation, 
whole households trooping silently away in the garb of 
servants to the desert somewhere, to the Holy Land on 
pilgrimages, or living a life of- hardship and privation 
and detachment from all public interests, in the very 
palaces which had once been the seats of authority. Her 
patricians moved silent about the streets in the rude 



VI.] 



THE MOTHER HOUSE. 



107 



sandals and mean robes of the monk : her great ladies 
drove forth no longer resplendent as Venus on her car, but 
stood like penitent Magdalenes upon the steps of a church ; 
and bridegroom and bride no longer linked with flowery 
garlands, but with the knotted cord of monastic rule, lived 
like vestals side by side. What was to come to a society so 
broken up and undermined, knowing no salvation save in 
its own complete undoing, preparing unconsciously for some 
convulsion at hand ? The interpreter of the dark sayings of 







am 



'^4 






ST. PETER S, FROM THE PIXCIO. 



prophecy goes on through one lingering age after another, 
holding the threats of divine justice as still and always 
unfulfilled, and will never be content that it is any other 
than the present economy which is marked with the curse 
and threatened with the ruin of Apocalyptic denunciations. 
But no one could doubt that the wine was red in that cup of 
the wrath of God which the city of so many sins held in her 
hand. The voice that called " Come out of her, my people," 
had rung aloud in tones unmistakable, calling the best of 
her sons and daughters from her side ; her natural weapons 



108 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

had fallen from her nerveless hands ; she had no longer any 
heart even to defend herself, she who had once but to lift 
her hand and the air had tingled to the very boundaries of 
the known world as if a blazing sword had been drawn. 
It requires but little imagination to appropriate to the 
condition of Rome on the eve of the invasion of Alaric every 
strophe of the magnificent ode in the eighteenth chapter 
of Revelation. There are reminiscences in that great poem 
of another, of the rousing of Hell to meet the king of the 
former Babylon echoing out of the mists of antiquity from 
the lips of the Hebrew prophet. Once more that cry was in 
the air — once more the thrill of approaching destruction was 
like the quiver of heat in the great atmosphere of celestial 
blue which encircled the white roofs, the shining temples, 
the old forums as yet untouched, and the new basilicas as 
yet scarce completed, of Rome. The old order was about 
to change finally, giving place to the new. 

All becomes confused in the velocity and precipitation of 
descending ruin. We can trace the last hours of Paula 
dying safe and quiet in her retreat at Bethlehem, and even 
of the less gentle Melania ; but when we attempt to follow 
the course of the events which overwhelmed the home of 
early faith on the Aventine, the confusion of storm and 
sack and horrible sufferings and terror fills the air with 
blackness. For years there had existed a constant succes- 
sion of danger and reprieve, of threatening hosts (the so- 
called friends not much better than the enemies) around the 
walls of the doomed city, great figures of conquerors with 
their armies coming and going, now the barbarian, now 
the Roman general upon the height of the wave of battle, 
the city escaping by a hair's breadth, then plunged into 
terror again. And Marcella's house had suffered with the 
rest. ISTo doubt much of the gaiety, the delightful intellectu- 
alism of that pleasant refuge, had departed with the alter- 
ing time. Age had subdued the liveliness and brightness 



vi.] THE MOTHER HOUSE. 109 

of a community still full of the correspondences, the much 
letter-writing which women love. Marcella's companions 
had died away from her side ; life was more quickly ex- 
hausted in these days of agitation, and she herself, the 
young and brilliant founder of that community of Souls, 
must have been sixty or more when the terrible Alaric, a 
scourge of God like his predecessor Attila, approached 
Eome. What had become of the rest we are not told, or 
if the relics of the community, nameless in their age and 
lessened importance, were still there : the only one that is 
mentioned is a young sister called Principia, her adopted 
child and attendant. Nothing can be more likely than that 
the remainder of the community had fled, seeking safety, 
or more likely an unknown death, in less conspicuous quar- 
ters of the city than the great palace of the Aventine with 
its patrician air of wealth and possible treasure. In that 
great house, so far as appears, remained only its mistress, 
her soul wound up for any martyrdom, and the girl who 
clung to her. If they dared to look forth at all from the 
marble terrace where so often they must have gazed over 
Rome shining white in the sunshine in all her measured 
lines and great proportions, her columns and her domes, 
what a dread scene must have met their eyes, clouds of 
smoke and wild gleams of flame, and the roar of outcry and 
slaughter mounting up into the air, soiling the very sky. 
There the greatest ladies of Rome had come in their gran- 
deur to enjoy the piquant contrast and the still more 
piquant talk, the philosophies which they loved to penetrate 
and understand, the learning which went over their heads. 
There Jerome, surrounded with soft flatteries and provoca- 
tions, had talked his best, giving forth out of his stores the 
tales of wonder he had brought from Eastern cells and 
caves and all the knowledge of the schools, to dazzle the 
amateurs of the Roman gynaeceum. What gay, what thrill- 
ing, what happy memories ! — mingled with the sweetness 



110 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

of remembrance of gentle Panla who was dead, of Asella 
dead, of Fabiola in all her fascinations and caprices, dead 
too so far as appears — and no doubt in those thirty years 
since first Marcella opened her house to the special service 
of God, many more ; till now that she was left alone, grey- 
headed, on that height whither the fierce Goths were com- 
ing, raging, flashing round them fire and flame, with the 
girl who would not leave her, the young maiden in her 
voiceless meekness whom we see only at this awful mo- 
ment, she who might have a sharper agony than death 
before her, the most appalling of martyrdoms. 

One final triumph however remained for Marcella. By 
what wonderful means we know not, by her prayers and 
tears, by supplication on her knees, to the rude Goths who 
after their sort were Christians, and sometimes spared the 
helpless victims and sometimes listened to a woman's 
prayer, she succeeded in saving her young companion from 
outrage, and in dragging her somehow to the shelter of the 
nearest church, where they were safe. But she was herself 
in her age and weakness, tortured, flogged, and treated with 
the utmost cruelty, that she might disclose the hiding-place 
in which she had put her treasure. The treasure of the 
house on the Aventine was not there : it had fed the poor, 
and supplied the wants of the sick in all the most miser- 
able corners of Rome. The kicks and blows of the baffled 
plunderers could not bring that long-expended gold and 
silver together again. But these sufferings were as nothing 
in comparison to the holy triumph of saving young Prin- 
cipia, which was the last and not the least wonderful work 
of her life. The very soldiers who had struck and beaten 
the mistress of the desolate house were overcome by her 
patience and valour, " Christ softened their hard hearts," 
says Jerome. " The barbarians conveyed both you and her 
to the basilica that you might find a place of safety or at 
least a tomb." Nothing can be more extraordinary in the 







ft l ,'i:' : ' 



S If:!"':'" 



k:... :... 



. ■■ ■■■ 



:».v„vr|! 






ina 



vi.] THE MOTHER HOUSE. 113 

midst of this awful scene of carnage and rapine than to 
know that the churches were sanctuaries upon which the 
rudest assailants dared not to lift a hand, and that the help- 
less women, half dead of fright and one of them bleeding 
and wounded with the cruel treatment she had received, 
were safe as soon as they had been dragged over the sacred 
threshold. 

The church in which Marcella and her young companion 
found shelter was the great basilica of St. Paul fuori le 
micra, beyond the Ostian gate. They were conducted there 
by their captors themselves, some compassionate Gaul or 
Frank, whose rude chivalry of soul had been touched by 
the spectacle of the aged lady's struggle for her child. 
What a terrible flight through the darkness must that have 
been " in the lost battle borne down by the flying " amid 
the trains of trembling fugitives all bent on that one spot 
of safety, the gloom lighted up by the gleams of the burn- 
ing city behind, the air full of shrieks and cries of the 
helpless, the Tiber rushing swift and strong by the path to 
swallow any helpless wayfarer pushed aside by stronger 
fugitives. The two ladies reached half-dead the great 
church on the edge of the Campagna, the last refuge of the 
miserable, into which were crowded the wrecks of Roman 
society, both Pagan and Christian, patrician and slave, 
hustled together in the equality of doom. A few days 
after, in the church itself, or some of its dependencies, 
Marcella died. Her palace in ruins, her companions dead 
or fled, she perished along with the old Pome against 
whose vices she had protested, but which she had loved 
and would not abandon : whose poor she had fed with her 
substance, whose society she had attempted to purify, and 
in which she had led so honourable and noble — may we 
not also believe amid all her austerities, in the brown gown 
which was almost a scandal, and the meagre meals that 
scarcely kept body and soul together ? — so happy a life. 



114 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

There is no trace now of the noble mansion which she 
devoted to so high a purpose, and few of the many pilgrims 
who love to discover all that is interesting in the relics of 
Rome, have even heard the name of Marcella — "Illam 
mitern, illam suavem, illam onmi melle et dulcedine dul- 
ciorem " — whose example " lured to higher worlds and led 
the way." But her pleasant memory lingers on the leafy 
crest of the Aventine where she lived, and where the 
church of Sta. Sabina now stands : and her mild shadow 
lies on that great church outside the gates, often destroyed, 
often restored, the shrine of Paul the Apostle, where, 
wounded and broken, but always faithful to her trust, she 
died. The history of the first dedicated household, the 
first convent, the ecclesia domestica, which was so bright a 
centre of life in the old Rome, not yet entirely Christian, 
is thus rounded into a perfect record. It began in 380 or 
thereabouts, it ended in 410. Its story is but an obscure 
chapter in the troubled chronicles of the time ; but there is 
none more spotless, and scarcely any so serenely radiant 
and bright. 

Pammachius also died in the siege, whether among the 
defenders of the city or in the general carnage is not known, 
" with many other brothers and sisters whose death is an- 
nounced to us " Jerome says, whom that dreadful news 
threw into a stupor of horror and misery, so that it was 
some time before he could understand the details or discover 
who was saved and who lost. The saved indeed were very 
few, and the losses many. Young Paula, the granddaughter 
of the first, the child of Toxotius, who also was happily 
dead before these horrors, had been for some years in Beth 
lehem peacefully learning how to take the elder Paula's 
place, and shedding sweetness into the life of the old 
prophet in his rocky chamber at Bethlehem, and of the 
grave Eustochium in her convent. Young Melania, stand- 
ing in the same relationship to the heroine of that name, 



VI.] 



THE MOTHER HOUSE. 



115 



whose fame is less sweet, was out of harm's way too. They 
and many humbler members of the community had escaped 
by flight, among the agitated crowds which had long been 
pouring out of Italy towards the East, some from mere 
panic, some by the vows of self-dedication and retirement 
from the world. Many more as has been seen escaped in 
Eome itself, before its agony began, by the still more effect- 
ual way of death. Only Marcella, the first of all, the pupil 
of Athanasius, the mother and mistress of so many conse- 
crated souls, fell on the outraged threshold of her own 
house, over which she had come and gone for thirty years, 
with those feet that are beautiful on the mountains, the 
feet of those who bring good tidings, and carry charity and 
loving kindness to every door. 







^1. 



-,U^-»*srSvQa>& 



PORTA SAN PAOLO. 



BOOK II. 
THE POPES WHO MADE THE PAPACY. 




THE STEPS OF SAN GREGORIO. 



BOOK II. 
THE POPES WHO MADE THE PAPACY. 

CHAPTER I. 



GREGORY THE GREAT. 

WHEN Rome had fallen into the last depths of deca- 
dence, luxury, weakness, and vice, the time of fierce 
and fiery trial came. The great city lay like a helpless woman 
at the mercy of her foes — or rather at the mercy of every 
new invader who chose to sack her palaces and throw down 
her walls, without even the pretext of any quarrel against 
the too wealthy and luxurious city, which had been for her 
last period at least nobody's enemy but her own. Alaric, 
who, not content with the heaviest ransom, returned to rage 
through her streets with all those horrors and cruelties 
which no advance in civilisation has ever yet entirely dis- 

119 



120 THE MAKERS OE MODERN" ROME. [chap. 

sociated from the terrible name of siege : Attila, whose fear 
of his predecessor's fate and the common report of murders 
and portents, St. Peter with a sword of flame guarding his 
city, and other signs calculated to melt the hearts of the 
very Huns in their bosoms, kept at a distance : passed by 
without harming the prostrate city. But Genseric and his 
Vandals were kept back by no such terrors. The ancient 
Rome, with all her magnificent relics of the imperial age, 
fell into ruin and was trampled under foot by victor after 
victor in the fierce license of barbarous triumph. Her secret 
stores of treasure, her gold and silver, her magnificent robes, 
her treasures of art fell, like her beautiful buildings, into 
the rude hands which respected nothing, neither beauty nor 
the traditions of a glorious past. How doth the city sit soli- 
tary that was full of people ! All the pathetic and wonder- 
ful plaints of the Hebrew prophet over a still holier and 
more ancient place, trodden under foot and turned into a 
desert, rise to the mind during this passion and agony of 
imperial Rome. But the mistress of the world had no such 
fierce band of patriots to fight inch by inch for her holy 
places as had the old Jerusalem. There were few to shed 
their blood for her in the way of defence. The blood that 
flowed was that of murdered weakness, not that freely shed 
of valiant men. 

During this terrible period of blood and outrage and pas- 
sion and suffering, one institution alone stood firm amid the 
ruins, wringing even from the fiercest of the barbarians a 
certain homage, and establishing a sanctuary in the midst 
of sack and siege in which the miserable could find shelter. 
As every other public office and potency fell, the Church 
raised an undaunted front, and took the place at once of 
authority and of succour among the crushed and down- 
trodden people. It is common to speak of this as the begin- 
ning of that astute and politic wisdom of Borne which made 
the city in the middle ages almost a greater power than in 



i.] GREGORY THE GREAT. 121 

her imperial days, and equally mistress of the world. But 
there is very little evidence that any great plan for the 
aggrandisement of the Church, or the establishment of her 
supremacy, had yet been formed, or that the early Popes 
had any larger purpose in their minds than to do their best 
in the position in which they stood, to avert disaster, to 
spread Christianity, and to shield as far as was possible 
the people committed to their care. No formal claim of 
supremacy over the rest of the Church had been as yet 
made : it was indeed formally repudiated by the great 
Gregory in the end of the sixth century as an unauthor- 
ised claim, attributed to the bishops of Rome only by their 
enemies, though still more indignantly to be denounced when 
put forth by any other ecclesiastical authority such as the pa- 
triarch of Constantinople. To Peter, he says in one of his 
epistles, was committed the charge of the whole Church, but 
his successors did not on that account call themselves rulers 
of the Church universal — how much less a bishropic of the 
East who had no such glorious antecedents ! 

But if pretension to the primacy had not yet been put 
forth, there had arisen the practical situation, which called the 
bishops of Eome to a kind of sovereignty of the city. The 
officials of the empire, a distant exarch at Ravenna, a feeble 
praetor at Eome, had no power either to protect or to rescue. 
The bishop instinctively, almost involuntarily, whenever he 
was a man of strength or note, was put into the breach. 
Whatever could be done by negotiation, he, a man of peace, 
was naturally called to do. Innocent procured from Alaric 
the exemption of the churches from attack even in the first 
and most terrible siege ; there wounded men and flying 
women found refuge in the hottest of the pillage, and Mar- 
cella struggling, praying for the deliverance of her young 
nun, through the brutal crowd which had invaded her house, 
was in safety with her charge, as we have seen, as soon as 
they could drag themselves within the sanctuary. This was 



122 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

already a great thing in that dread conflict of force with 
weakness — and it continued to be the case more or less in 
all the successive waves of fire and flame which passed over 
Rome. And when the terrible tide of devastation was over, 
one patriot Pope at least took the sacred vessels of gold and 
silver, which had been saved along with the people in their 
sanctuaries, and melted them down to procure bread for the 
remnant, thus doubly delivering the flock committed to his 
care. These facts worked silently, and there seems no rea- 
son to believe other than unconsciously at first, towards the 
formation of the great power which was once more to make 
Rome a centre of empire. The historian is too apt to per- 
ceive in every action an early-formed and long-concealed 
project tending towards one great end; and it is common 
to recognise, even in the missionary expeditions of the 
Church, as well as in the immediate protection exercised 
around her seat, this astute policy and ever-maturing, ever- 
growing scheme. But neither Leo nor Gregory require any 
such explanation of their motives : their duty was to pro- 
tect, to deliver, to work day and night for the welfare of 
the people who had no other protectors : as it was their first 
duty to spread the Gospel, to teach all nations according to 
their Master's commission. It is hard to take from them 
the credit of those measures which were at once their natu- 
ral duty and their delight, in order to make all their offices 
of mercy subservient to the establishment of a universal 
authority to which neither of them laid any claim. 

While Rome still lay helpless in the midst of successive 
invasions, now in one conqueror's hands, now in another, 
towards the middle of the sixth century a young man of 
noble race — whose father and mother were both Christians, 
the former occupying a high official position, as was also 
the case with the son, in his earlier years — became remark- 
able among his peers according to the only fashion which 
a high purpose and noble meaning seems to have been able 



i.] GREGORY THE GREAT. 123 

to take at that period. Perhaps such a spirit as that of 
Gregory could never have been belligerent; yet it is curi- 
ous to note that no patriotic saviour of his country, no 
defender of Rome, who might have called forth a spirit 
in the gilded youth, and raised up the ancient Roman 
strength for the deliverance of the city, seems to have 
been possible in that age of degeneration. No Maccabeeus 
was to be found among the ashes of the race which once 
had ruled the world. Whatever excellence remained in it 
was given to the new passion of the cloister, the instinct of 
sacrifice and renunciation instead of resistance and defence. 
It may be said that the one way led equally with the other 
to that power which is always dear to the heart of man: 
yet it is extraordinary that amid all the glorious traditions 
of Rome, — notwithstanding the fame of great ancestors still 
hanging about every noble house, and the devotion which 
the city itself, then as now, excited among its children, a 
sentiment which has made many lesser places invulnerable, 
so long as there was a native arm to strike a blow for them, 
no single bold attempt was ever made, no individual stand, 
no popular frenzy of patriotism ever excited in defence of 
the old empress of the world. The populace perhaps was 
too completely degraded to make any such attempt possible, 
but the true hero when he appears does not calculate, and 
is able to carry out his glorious effort with sometimes the 
worst materials. However, it is needless to attempt to 
account for such an extraordinary failure in the very qual- 
ities which had made the Roman name illustrious. Despair 
must have seized upon the very heart of the race. That 
race itself had been vitiated and mingled with baser ele- 
ments by ages of conquest, repeated captivities, and over- 
throws, and all the dreadful yet monotonous vicissitudes of 
disaster, one outrage following another, and the dreadful 
sense of impotence, which crushes the very being, growing 
with each new catastrophe. It must have appeared to the 



124 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

children of the ancient conquerors that there was no refuge 
or hope for them, save in that kingdom not of this world, 
which had risen while everything else crumbled under their 
feet, which had been growing in silence while the old econ- 
omy fell into ashes, and which alone promised a resurrec- 
tion and renewal worthy of the highest hopes. 

This ideal had been growing throughout the world, and 
had penetrated into almost every region of Christendom 
before the period of Gregory's birth. Nearly a hundred 
and fifty unhappy years had passed since Marcella ended 
her devout life amid the fire and flame of the first siege ; 
but the times had so little changed that it was at first under 
the same aspect which attracted that Roman lady and so 
many of her contemporaries, that the monastic life recom- 
mended itself to the young patrician Gregorius, in the 
home of his parents, the Roman villa on the edge of that 
picturesque and splendid wood of great oak-trees which 
gave to the Ccelian Hill its first title of Mons Querquetu- 
lanus. It had been from the beginning of his life a devout 
house, full of the presence and influence of three saintly 
women, all afterwards canonised, his mother Silvia and his 
father's sisters. That father himself was at least not un- 
congenial to his surroundings, though living the usual life, 
full of magnificence and display, of the noble Roman, filling 
in his turn great offices in the state, or at least the name and 
outward pomp of offices which had once been great. Some 
relics of ancient temples gleaming through the trees beyond 
the gardens of the villa must still have existed among the 
once sacred groves ; and the vast buildings of the old econ- 
omy, the Colosseum behind, the ruined and roofless palaces 
of the Palatine, would be visible from the terrace on which 
the meditative youth wandered, pondering over Rome at his 
feet and the great world lying beyond, in which there were 
endless marchings and countermarchings' of barbarous 
armies, one called in to resist the other, Huns and Vandals 



I.] GKEGORY THE GREAT. 125 

from one quarter, irresistible Franks, alien races all given to 
war, while the secret and sonl of peace lay in that troubled 
and isolated stronghold of Him whose kingdom was not 
of this world. Gregory musing can have had no thought, 
such as we should put instinctively into the mind of a 
noble young man in such circumstances, of dying upon the 
breached and crumbling walls for his country, or leading 
any forlorn hope ; and if his fancy strayed instead far from 
those scenes of battle and trouble to the convent cells and 
silent brotherhoods, where men disgusted and sick of heart 
could enter and pray, it was as yet with no thought or inten- 
tion of following their example. He tells us himself that he 
resisted as long as he could "the grace of conversion," and as 
a matter of fact entered into the public life such as it was, of 
the period, following in his father's footsteps, and was him- 
self, like Gordianus, prcetor urbis in his day, when he had 
attained the early prime of manhood. The dates of his life 
are dubious until we come to his later years, but it is sup- 
posed that he was born about 540; and he was recom- 
mended for the Prsetorship by the Emperor Julius, which 
must have been before 573, at which date he would have 
attained the age of thirty-three, that period so significant in 
the life of man, the limit, as is believed, of our Lord's exist- 
ence on earth, and close to that mezzo del cammin which the 
poet has celebrated as the turning-point of life. In his 
splendid robes, attended by his throng of servants, he must 
no doubt have ruffled it with the best among the officials of 
a state which had scarcely anything but lavish display and 
splendour to justify its pretence of government ; but we hear 
nothing either of the early piety or early profanity which 
generally distinguish, one or the other, the beginning of a 
predestined saint. Neither prodigal nor devotee, the son of 
Gordianus and Silvia did credit to his upbringing, even if 
he did not adopt its austerer habits. But when his father 
died, the attraction which drew so many towards the clois- 



126 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

ter must have begun to operate upon Gregory. When all 
the wealth came into his hands, when his devout mother 
retired to her nun's cell on the Aventine, close to the old 
basilica of S. Sabba, giving up the world, and the young 
man was left in full possession of his inheritance and the 
dwelling of his fathers, he would seem to have come to a 
serious pause in his life. Did he give a large slice of his 
fortune to endow monasteries in distant Sicily, as far out of 
the way, one might say, as possible, by way of compromis- 
ing with his conscience, and saving himself from the sweep 
of the current which had begun to catch his feet ? Perhaps 
it was some family connection with Sicily — estates, situated 
there as some think, which prompted the appropriation of 
his gifts to that distant island ; but this is mere speculation, 
and all that the authorities tell us is that he did establish 
and endow six monasteries in Sicily, without giving any 
reason for it. This was his first step towards the life to 
which later all his wishes and interests were devoted. 

It would seem, however, if there is any possible truth in 
the idea, that the Sicilian endowments were a sort of ransom 
for himself and the personal sacrifice of the world which 
his growing fervour demanded of him, that the expedient 
was not a successful one. He did not resist the grace of 
conversion very long ; but it is curious to find him, so long 
after, adopting the same expedient as that which had formed 
a middle ground for his predecessors in an earlier age, by 
converting his father's house into a convent. St. Benedict, 
the first of monastic founders in Europe, was scarcely born 
when Marcella first called about her the few pious maidens 
and widows who formed her permanent household in Borne ; 
but by the time of Gregory, the order of Benedict had 
become one of the great facts and institutions of the time 
— and his villa was soon filled with a regular community 
of black-robed monks with their abbot and other leaders. 
Remaining in the beloved shelter of his natural home, he 



i.] GREGORY THE GREAT. 127 

became a member of this community. He did not even 
retain, as Marcella did, the government of the new estab- 
lishment in his own hand, but served humbly, holding no 
office, as an undistinguished brother. It was not without 
difficulty that he made up his mind to this step. In the 
letter to Leander which forms the dedication of his com- 
mentary on Job, he gives a brief and vague account of his 
own hesitations and doubts. The love of things eternal, he 
says, had taken hold upon his mind while yet custom had 
so wound its chains round him that he could not make up 
his mind to change his outward garb. But the new in- 
fluence was so strong that he engaged in the service of the 
world as it were in semblance only, his purpose and inclina- 
tion turning more and more towards the cloister. When 
the current of feeling and spiritual excitement carried him 
beyond all these reluctances and hesitations, and he at last 
" sought the haven of the monastery," having, as he says, 
" left all that is of the world as at that time I vainly be- 
lieved, I came out naked from the shipwreck of human life." 
His intention at this crisis was evidently not that of fitting 
himself for the great offices of the Church or entering what 
was indeed one of the greatest professions of the time, the 
priesthood, the one which, next to that of the soldier, was 
most apt for advancement. Like Jerome, Gregory's inclina- 
tion was to be a monk and not a priest, and he expressly 
tells us that "the virtue of obedience was set against my 
own inclination to make me take the charge of ministering 
at the holy altar," which he was obliged to accept upon the 
ground that the Church had need of him. This disinclina- 
tion to enter the priesthood is all the more remarkable that 
Gregory was evidently a preacher born, and seems early in 
his monastic life to have developed this gift. The elucida- 
tion of so difficult and mysterious a book as that of Job was 
asked of him by his brethren at an early period of his 
career. 



128 THE MAKERS OF MODERN" ROME. [chap. 

We have no guidance of dates to enable us to know how 
long a time he passed in the monastery, which was dedicated 
to St. Andrew, after he turned it from a palace-villa into 
monastic cells and cloisters ; but the legend which comes in 
more or less to every saintly life here affords us one or two 
delightful vignettes to illustrate the history. His mother 
Silvia in her nun's cell, surrounded by its little garden, at 
S. Sabba, sent daily, the story goes — and there is no reason 
to doubt its truth — a mess of vegetables to her son upon 
the Ccelian, prepared by her own tender hands. One can 
imagine some shockheacled Roman of a lay brother, old 
servant or retainer, tramping alone, day by day, over the 
stony ways, across the deep valley between the two hills, 
with the simple dish tied in its napkin, which perhaps had 
some savour of home and childhood, the mother's provision 
for her boy. 

Another story, less original, relates how having sold every- 
thing and given all his money to the poor, Gregory was 
beset by a shipwrecked sailor who came to him again and 
again in the cell where he sat writing, and to whom at last, 
having no money, he gave the only thing of value he had 
left, a silver dish given him by his mother — perhaps the 
very bowl in which day by day his dinner of herbs was sent 
to him. Needless to say that the mysterious sailor assumed 
afterwards a more glorious form, and Gregory found that 
he had given alms, if not as in most such cases to his Mas- 
ter, at least to a ministering angel. Then, too, in those 
quiet years arose other visionary legends, that of the dove 
who sat on his shoulder and breathed inspiration into his 
ear, and the Madonna who spoke to him as he sat musing 
— a Madonna painted by no mortal hands, but coming into 
being on the wall — a sweet and consoling vision in the 
light that never was by sea or shore. These are the neces- 
sary adjuncts of every saintly legend. It is not needful 
that we should insist upon them ; but they help us to realise 



i.] GREGORY THE GREAT. 129 

the aspect of the young Roman who had, at last, after some 
struggles attained that " grace of conversion " which makes 
the renunciation of every worldly advantage possible, but 
who still dwelt peacefully in his own house, and occupied 
the cell he had chosen for himself with something of the 
consciousness of the master of the house, although no 
superiority of rank among his brethren, finding no doubt a 
delightful new spring of life in the composition of his homi- 
lies, and the sense that a higher sphere of work and activity 
was thus opening before his feet. 

The cell of St. Gregory and his marble chair in which he 
worked and rested, are still shown for the admiration of the 
faithful on the right side of the church which bears his 
name : but neither church nor convent are of his building, 
though they occupy the sites consecrated by him to the 
service of God. " Here was the house of Gregory, converted 
by him into a monastery," says the inscription on the portico. 
And in one spot at least the steps of the Roman gentleman 
turned monk, may still be traced in the evening freshness 
and among the morning dews — in the garden, from which 
the neighbouring summits of the sun-crowned city still rise 
before the rapt spectator with all their memories and their 
ruins. There were greater ruins in Gregory's day, ruins 
still smoking from siege and fire, roofless palaces telling 
their stern lesson of the end of one great period of empire, 
of a mighty power overthrown, and new rude overwhelming 
forces, upon which no man could calculate, come in, in 
anarchy and bloodshed, to turn the world upside down. 
We all make our own somewhat conventional comparisons 
and reflections upon that striking scene, and moralise at our 
leisure over the Pagan and the Christian, and all that has been 
signified to the world in such an overthrow and transforma- 
tion. But Gregory's thoughts as he paced his garden ter- 
race must have been very different from ours. He no 
doubt felt a thrill of pleasure as he looked at the desecrated 



130 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

places over which Goth and Vandal had raged, in the 
thought that the peaceful roof of his father's house was 
safe, a refuge for the chosen souls who had abjured the 
world; and self-withdrawn from all those conflicts and 
miseries, mused in his heart over the new world which was 
dawning, under the tender care of the Church and the 
ministration of those monks denuded of all things, whose 
sole inspiration was to be the love of God and the succour 
of the human race. The world could not go on did not 
every new economy form to itself some such glorious dream 
of the final triumph of the good, the noble, and the true. 
Great Rome lay wrecked and ended in the sight of the 
patrician monk who had schooled himself out of all the bit- 
terness of the vanquished in that new hope and new life of 
the cloister. Did he already see his brethren, the messengers 
of the faith, going forth to all the darkest corners of the 
unknown world with their gospel, and new skies and new 
lands turning to meet the shining of the new day ? — or with 
thoughts more profound in awe, more sacred in mysterious 
joy, did he hold his breath to think what all these ragings 
of nations and overturning of powers might portend, the 
glorious era when all misery should be ended, and the Lord 
come in the clouds to judge the earth and vindicate His 
people ? The monks have failed like the emperors since 
Gregory's day — the Popes have found no more certain solu- 
tion for the problems of earth than did the philosophers. 
But it is perhaps more natural on one of those seven hills 
of Rome, to think of that last great event which shall fulfil 
all things, and finally unravel this mortal coil of human 
affairs, than it is on any other spot of earth except the 
mystic Mount of the Olives, from which rose the last visible 
steps of the Son of Man. 

We have no knowledge how long this quiet life lasted, or 
if he was long left to write his sermons in his cell, and muse 
in his garden, and receive his spare meal from his mother's 



I.] GREGORY THE GREAT 131 

hands, the mess of lentils, or beans, or artichokes, which 
would form his only fare ; but it is evident that even in this 
seclusion he had given assurance of a man to the authorities 
of the Church and was looked upon as one of its hopes. He 
had no desire, as has been said, to become a priest, but rather 
felt an almost superstitious fear of being called upon to 
minister at the holy altar, a sentiment very usual in those 
days among men of the world converted to a love of the life 
of prayer and penitence, but not of the sacerdotal charge or 
profession. It is curious indeed how little the sacramental 
idea had then developed in the minds of the most pious. 
The rule of Benedict required the performance of the mass 
only on Sundays and festivals, and there is scarcely any 
mention of the more solemn offices of worship in the age of 
Jerome, who was a priest in spite of himself, and never said 
but one mass in his life. It was to " live the life," as in the 
case of a recent remarkable convert from earthly occupations 
to mystical religionism, that the late praetor, sick of worldly 
things, devoted himself : and not to enter into a new caste, 
against which the tradition that discredits all priesthoods 
and the unelevated character of many of its members, has 
always kept up a prejudice, which exists now as it existed 
then. 

But Gregory could not struggle against the fiat of his 
ecclesiastical superiors, and was almost compelled to receive 
the first orders. After much toiling and sifting of evidence 
the ever careful Bollandists have concluded that this event 
happened in 578 or 579 — while Baronius, perhaps less big- 
oted in his accuracy, fixes it in 583. ISTor was it without 
a distinct purpose that this step was taken ; there was more 
to do in the world for this man than to preach homilies and 
expound Scripture in the little Roman churches. Some one 
was wanted to represent Pope Benedict the First in Constan- 
tinople, some one who knew the world and would not fear 
the face of any emperor ; and it was evidently to enable him 



132 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

to hold the post of Apocrisarius or Nuncio, that Gregory 
was hastily invested with deacon's orders, and received the 
position later known as that of a Cardinal deacon. It is a 
little premature, and harmonises ill with the other features 
of the man, to describe him as a true mediaeval Nuncio, with 
all the subtle powers and arrogant assumptions of the Rome 
of the middle ages. This however is Gibbon's description 
of him, a bold anachronism, antedating by several ages the 
pretensions which had by no means come to any such devel- 
opment in the sixth century. He describes the Apocrisarius 
of Pope Benedict as one " who boldly assumed in the name 
of St. Peter a tone of independent dignity which would 
have been criminal and dangerous in the most illustrious 
layman of the empire." 

There is little doubt that Gregory would be an original 
and remarkable figure among the sycophants of the impe- 
rial court, where the vices of the East mingled with those 
of the West, and everything was venal, corrupt, and debased. 
Gregory was the representative of a growing power, full of 
life and the prospects of a boundless future. There was 
neither popedom nor theories of universal primacy as yet, 
and he was confronted at Constantinople by ecclesiastical 
functionaries of as high pretensions as any he could put 
forth ; but yet the Bishop of Rome had a unique position, 
and the care of the interests of the entire Western Church 
was not to be held otherwise than with dignity and a bold 
front whoever should oppose. 

There was however another side to the life of the 
Nuncio which is worthy of note and very characteristic 
of the man. He had been accompanied on his mission by 
a little train of monks; for these coenobites were nothing 
if not social, and their solitude was always tempered by 
the proverbial companion to whom they could say how de- 
lightful it was to be alone. This little private circle 
formed a home for the representative of St. Peter, to 



I.] 



GREGORY THE GREAT. 



133 



which he retired with delight from the wearisome audi- 
ences, intrigues, and ceremonies of the imperial court. 
Another envoy, Leander, a noble Spaniard, afterwards 
Bishop of Seville, and one of the favourite saints of Spain, 
was in Constantinople at the same time, charged with some 
high mission from Rome " touching the faith of the Visi- 
goths," whose conversion from Arianism was chiefly the 
work of this apostolic labourer. And he too found refuge 




VILLA DE' MEDICI. 



in the home of Gregory among the friends there gathered 
together, probably bringing with him his own little retinue 
in the same Benedictine habit. " To their society I fled," 
says Gregory, " as to the bosom of the nearest port from 
the rolling swell and waves of earthly occupation ; and 
though that office which withdrew me from the monastery 
had with the point of its employments stabbed to death 
my former tranquillity of life, yet in their society I was 
reanimated." They read and prayed together, keeping up 



134 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

the beloved punctilios of the monastic rule, the brethren 
with uninterrupted attention, the Nuncio and the Bishop as 
much as was possible to them in the intervals of their 
public work. And in the cool atrio of some Eastern palace, 
with the tinkling fountain in the midst and the marble 
benches round, the little company with one breath besought 
their superior to exercise for them those gifts of exposition 
and elucidation of which he had already proved himself 
a master. " It was then that it seemed good to those 
brethren, you too adding your influence as you will remem- 
ber, to oblige me by the importunity of their requests to 
set forth the book of the blessed Job — and so far as the 
Truth should inspire me, to lay open to them these mys- 
teries." We cannot but think it was a curious choice for 
the brethren to make in the midst of that strange glitter- 
ing world of Constantinople, where the ecclesiastical news 
would all be of persecuting Arians and perverse Eastern 
bishops, and where all kinds of subtle heresies, both doc- 
trinal and personal, were in the air, fine hair-splitting argu- 
ments as to how much or how little of common humanity 
was in the sacred person of our Lord, as well as questions 
as to the precise day on which to keep Easter and other 
regulations of equal importance. But to none of these 
matters did the monks in exile turn their minds. " They 
made this too an additional burden which their petition 
laid upon me, that I would not only unravel the words of 
the history in allegorical senses, but that I would go on to 
give to the allegorical sense the turn of a moral exercise : 
with the addition of something yet harder, that I would 
fortify the different meanings with analogous passages, and 
that these, should they chance to be involved, should be 
disentangled by the aid of additional explanation." 

This abstruse piece of work was the recreation with which 
his brethren supplied the active mind of Gregory in the 
midst of his public employments and all the distractions of 



i.] GREGORY THE GREAT. 135 

the imperial court. It need not be said that he did not ap- 
proach the subject critically or with any of the lights of 
that late learning which has so much increased the difficulty 
of approaching any subject with simplicity. It is not sup- 
posed even that he had any knowledge of the original, or 
indeed any learning at all. The Nuncio and his monks 
were not disturbed by questions about that wonderful scene 
in which Satan stands before God. They accepted it with 
a calm which is as little concerned by its poetic grandeur as 
troubled by its strange suggestions. That extraordinary rev- 
elation of an antique world, so wonderfully removed from 
us, beyond all reach of history, was to them the simplest 
preface to a record of spiritual experience, full of instruction 
to themselves, lessons of patience and faith, and all the con- 
solations of God. Nothing is more likely than that there 
were among the men who clustered about Gregory in his 
Eastern palace, some who like Job had seen everything that 
was dear to them perish, and had buried health and wealth 
and home and children under the ashes of sacked and burn- 
ing Rome. We might imagine even that this was the rea- 
son why that mysterious poem with all its wonderful dis- 
coursings was chosen as the subject to be treated in so select 
an assembly. Few of these men if any would be peaceful 
sons of the cloister, bred up in the stillness of conventual 
life; neither is it likely that they would be scholars or 
divines. They were men rescued from a world more than 
usually terrible and destructive of individual happiness, 
saddened by loss, humiliated in every sensation either of 
family or national pride, the fallen sons of a great race, 
trying above all things to console themselves for the destruc- 
tion of every human hope. And the exposition of Job is 
written with this end, with strange new glosses and interpre- 
tations from that New Testament which was not yet six 
hundred years old, and little account of any difference be- 
tween : for were not both Holy Scripture intended for the 



136 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

consolation and instruction of mankind ? and was not this 
the supreme object of all — not to raise antiquarian questions 
or exercise the mind on metaphysical arguments, but to 
gather a little balsam for the wounds, and form a little prop 
for the weakness of labouring and heavily laden men ? 
Moralia : "The Book of the Morals of St. Gregory the 
Pope " is the title of the book — a collection of lessons how 
to endure and suffer, how to hope and believe, how to stand 
fast — in the certainty of a faith that overcomes all things, 
in the very face of fate. 

" Whosoever is speaking concerning God," says Gregory, 
" must be careful to search out thoroughly whatsoever fur- 
nishes moral instruction to his hearers ; and should account 
that to be the right method of ordering his discourse which 
permits him when opportunity for edification requires it, to 
turn aside for a useful purpose from that which he had be- 
gun to speak of. He that treats of sacred writ should fol- 
low the way of a river : for if a river as it flows along its 
channel meets with open valleys on its side, into these it 
immediately turns the course of its current, and when they are 
copiously supplied presently it pours itself back into its bed. 
Thus unquestionably should it be with every one that treats 
the Divine word, so that if discussing any subject he chances 
to find at hand any occasion of seasonable edification he 
. should as it were force the streams of discourse towards the 
adjacent valley, and when he has poured forth enough upon 
its level of instruction fall back into the channel of discourse 
which he had proposed to himself." 

We do not know what the reader may think of Gregory's 
geography; but certainly he carries out his discursive 
views to the full, and fills every valley he may chance to 
come to in his flowing, with pools and streams — no doubt 
waters of refreshing to the souls that surrounded him, ever 
eager to press him on. A commentary thus called forth 
by the necessities of the moment, spoken in the first place 



i.] GREGORY THE GREAT. 137 

to anxious listeners who had with much pressure demanded 
it, and who nodded their heads over it with mingled appro- 
bation and criticism as half their own, has a distinctive 
character peculiar to itself, and requires little aid from 
science or learning. A large portion of it was written as 
it fell from his lips, without revision Gregory informs us, 
" because the brethren drawing me away to other things, 
would not leave time to correct this with any great degree 
of exactness." 

A gleam of humour comes across the picture as he 
describes his position among this band of dependent and 
applauding followers, who yet were more or less the masters 
of his leisure and private life. "Pursuing my object of 
obeying their instructions, lohicJi I must confess ivere suffi- 
ciently numerous, I have completed this work," he says. 
The humour is a little rueful, the situation full of force ami 
nature. The little group of lesser men would no doubt 
have fully acknowledged themselves inferior to the eloquent 
brother, their founder, their instructor, so much greater a 
man in every way than themselves : but yet not able to get 
on without the hints of Brother John or Brother Paul, 
helped so much by that fine suggestion of the Cellarius, 
and the questions and sagacious remarks of the others. 
The instructions of the brethren! who does not recognise 
the scene, the nods aside, the objections, the volunteered 
information and directions how to say this or that, which 
he knew so much better how to say than any of them! 
while he sat listening all the time, attending to every 
criticism, taking up a hint here and there, with that 
curious alchemy of good humour and genius, turning the 
dull remarks to profit, yet always with a twinkle in his 
eye at those advices " sufficiently numerous " which aimed 
at teaching him how to teach them, a position which many 
an ecclesiastic and many an orator must have realised since 
then. Gregory reveals his consciousness of the state of 



138 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

affairs quite involuntarily, nothing being further from his 
mind than to betray to his reverend and saintly brother 
anything so human and faulty as a smile; and it is clear 
that he took the animadversions in good part with as much 
good nature as humour. To make out the features of the 
same man in Gibbon's picture of an arrogant priest assum- 
ing more than any layman durst assume, is very difficult. 
The historian evidently made his study from models a few 
hundred years further down in the record. 

Gregory seems to have held the place of Apocrisarius 
twice under two different Popes — Benedict I. and Pelagius 
II. ; but whether he returned to Eome between the two is 
not clear. One part of his commission from Pelagius was 
to secure help from the Emperor against the Lombards who 
were threatening Rome. The Pope's letter with its lament- 
able account of the undefended and helpless condition of 
the city, and the urgency with which he entreats his repre- 
sentative to support the pleading of a special envoy sent 
for that purpose, is interesting. It is sent to Gregory by 
the hands of a certain Sebastian, "our brother aud co- 
adjutor," who has been in Ravenna with the general Decius, 
and therefore is able to describe at first hand the terrible 
state of affairs to the Emperor. "Such misfortunes and 
tribulations," says the Pope, "have been inflicted upon us 
by the perfidy of the Lombards contrary to their own oath 
as no one could describe. Therefore speak and act so as to 
relieve us speedily in our danger. For the state is so 
hemmed in, that unless God put it into the heart of our 
most pious prince to show pity to his servants, and to 
vouchsafe us a grant of money, and a commander and 
leader, we are left in the last extremity, all the districts 
round Rome being defenceless, and the Exarch unable to 
do anything to help us. Therefore may God persuade the 
Emperor to come quickly to our aid before the armies of 
that most accursed race have overrun our lands." 



I.] GREGORY THE GREAT. 139 

What a strange overturn of all things is apparent when 
such a piteous appeal is conveyed to the Eastern empire 
already beginning to totter, from what was once imperial 
and triumphant Rome ! 

It was in 586, four years before the end of the life of 
Pelagius, that Gregory returned home. The abbot of his 
convent, Maximianus, had been promoted to the see of 
Syracuse, though whether for independent reasons or to 
make room for Gregory in that congenial position we are 
not informed; and the Nuncio on his return succeeded 
naturally to the vacant place. If it was now or at an 
earlier period that he bestowed all his robes, jewels, etc., 
on the convent it is difficult to decide, for there seems 
always to have been some reserve of gifts to come out on a 
later occasion, after we have heard of an apparent sacrifice 
of all things for the endowment of one charity or another. 
At all events Gregory's charities were endless and con- 
tinued as long as he lived. 

No retirement within the shadow of the convent was 
however possible now for the man who had taken so con- 
spicuous a position in public life. He was appointed secre- 
tary to the Pope, combining that office with the duties of 
head of his convent, and would appear besides to have been 
the most popular preacher in Borne, followed from one 
church to another by admiring crowds, and moving the 
people with all the force of that religious oratory which is 
more powerful than any other description of eloquence: 
though to tell the truth we find but little trace of this 
irresistible force in his discourses as they have come down 
to us. Popular as he was he does not seem to have had 
any special reputation either for learning or for literary 
style. 

One of the best known of historical anecdotes is the story 
of Gregory's encounter with the group of English children 
brought to Rome as slaves, whom he saw accidentally, as we 



140 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

say, in one of his walks. It belongs in all probability to 
this period of his life, and no doubt formed an episode in 
his daily progress from St. Andrew's on its hill to the 
palace of the Bishop of Kome which was then attached to 
the great church of the Lateran gate. In this early home 
of the head of the Roman hierarchy there would no doubt 
be accommodation for pilgrims and strangers, in addition 
to the spare court of the primitive Pope, but probably 
littla anticipation of the splendours of the Vatican, not yet 
dreamed of. Gregory was pursuing his musing way, a 
genial figure full of cheerful observation and interest in all 
around him, when he was suddenly attracted as he crossed 
some street or square, amid the crowd of dark heads and 
swarthy faces by a group, unlike the rest, of fair Saxon 
boys, long-limbed and slender, with their rose tints and 
golden locks. The great ecclesiastic appears to us here all 
at once in a new light, after all we have known of him 
among his monastic brethren. He would seem to have 
been one of those inveterate punsters who abound among 
ecclesiastics, as well as a tender-hearted man full of fatherly 
instincts. He stopped to look at the poor children so unlike 
anything he knew. Who were they? Angles. TSTay, more 
like angels, he said in his kind tones, with no doubt a smile 
in return for the wondering looks suddenly raised upon 
him. And their country? Deiri. Ah, a happy sign! de 
ira eruti, destined to rise out of wrath into blessedness. 
And their king? the boys themselves might by this time 
be moved to answer the kind monk, who looked at them 
so tenderly. Ella — Alle, as it is reported in the Latin, 
softening the narrower vowel. And was it still all heathen 
that distant land, and unknown rude monarch, and the 
parents of these angelic children? Then might it soon be, 
good Lord, that Allelujah should sound wherever the bar- 
barous Alle reigned! Perhaps he smiled at his own play 
upon words, as punsters are apt to do, as he strolled away, 



i.] GREGORY THE GREAT. 141 

not we may be sure without a touch of benediction upon 
the shining tawny heads of the little Saxon lions. But 
smiling was not all it came to. The thought dwelt with 
him as he pursued his way, by the great round of the half- 
ruined Colosseum, more ruinous probably then than now, 
and clown the long street to the Latin gate, where Pelagius 
and all the work of his secretaryship awaited him. The 
Pope was old and wanted cheering, especially in those 
dark days when the invader so often raged without, and 
Tiber was slowly swelling within, muttering wrath and 
disaster; while no force existed, to be brought against 
one enemy or another but the prayers of a few old men. 
Gregory told the story of his encounter, perhaps making 
the old Pope laugh at the wit so tempered with devotion, 
before he put forth his plea for a band of missionaries to 
be sent to those unknown regions to convert that beautiful 
and wonderful fair-haired race. Pelagius was very willing 
to give his consent; but where were men to be found to 
risk themselves and their lives on such a distant expedition 
among the savages of that unknown island? When it was 
found that nobody would undertake such a perilous mission, 
Gregory, who would naturally have become more deter- 
mined irf respect to it after every repulse, offered himself; 
and somehow managed to extort a consent from the Pope, 
of which he instantly took advantage, setting out at once 
with a band of faithful brethren, among whom no doubt 
must have been some of those who had accompanied him 
when he was Nuncio into scenes so different, and pressed 
him on with their advice and criticism while he opened to 
them the mysteries of Scripture. They might be tyrannical 
in their suggestions, but no doubt the impulse of the apos- 
tles — "let us die with him" — was strong in their hearts. 
No sooner was it known, however, in Eome that Gregory 
had left the city on so distant and perilous a mission than 
the people rose in a sudden tumult. They rushed together 



142 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

from all the quarters of the city in excited bands towards 
the Lateran, surrounding the Pope with angry cries and 
protests, demanding the recall of the preacher, whose elo- 
quence as well as his great benefactions to the poor had 
made him to the masses the foremost figure in the Church. 
The Pope, frightened by this tumult, yielded to the demand, 
and sent off messengers in hot haste to bring the would-be 
missionary back. The picture which his biographers afford 
us is less known than the previous incidents, yet full of 
character and picturesque detail. The little band had got 
three days on in their journey — one wonders from what 
port they meant to embark, for Ostia, the natural way, was 
but a few hours from Kome — when they made their usual 
halt at noon for refreshment and rest "in the fields." 
Gregory had seated himself under the shade of a tree with 
a book to beguile the warm and lingering hours. And as 
he sat thus reading with all the bustle of the little encamp- 
ment round him, men and horses in the outdoor freedom 
enjoying the pause, the shade, and needful food — a locust 
suddenly alighted upon his page, on the roll of parchment 
which was then the form of the latest editions. Such a 
visitor usually alights for a moment and no more; but 
Gregory was too gentle a spectator of all life to*dash the 
insect off, and it remained there with a steadiness and 
" mansuetude " unlike the habits of the creature. The good 
monk began to be interested, to muse and pun, and finally 
to wonder. "Locusta," he said to himself, groping for a 
meaning, "loca sta." What could it signify but that in 
this place he would be made to stay? He called to his 
attendants to make ready with all speed and push on, eager 
to get beyond the reach of pursuit ; but before the cumbrous 
train could be got under way again, the Pope's messengers 
arrived "bloody with spurring, fiery red with haste," and 
the missionaries were compelled to return to Kome. Thus 
his first attempt for the conversion of England was to have 



i.] GREGORY THE GREAT. 143 

been made, could lie have carried out his purpose, by 
himself. 

There is a curious story also related of Gregory in his 
walks through Rome, the issue of which, could an unbe- 
lieving age put faith in it, would be even more remarkable. 
One day as he passed by the Forum of Trajan — then no 
doubt a spot more wildly ruinous than now, though still 
with some of its great galleries and buildings standing 
among overthrown monuments and broken pillars — some 
one told him the story of Trajan and the widow, which 
must have greatly affected the mediaeval imagination since 
Dante has introduced it in his great poem. The prayer 
addressed to the Emperor on his way to the wars Avas the 
same as that of the widow in the parable, " Avenge me of 
mine adversary." "I will do so when I return," the Em- 
peror replied. " But who will assure me that you will ever 
return?" said the importunate widow; upon which the 
Emperor, recognising the justice of the objection, stopped 
his warlike progress until he had executed the vengeance 
required, upon one of his own officials (is it not said by one 
authority his own son?) who had wronged her. Gregory 
was as much impressed by this tale as Dante. He went 
on lamenting that such a man, so just, so tolerant of inter- 
ruption, so ready to do what was right, should be cut off 
from the Divine mercy. He carried this regret with him 
all the way to the tomb of the apostles, where he threw 
himself on his knees and prayed with all his heart that the 
good Trajan, the man who did right according to the light 
that was in him, at all costs, should be saved. Some ver- 
sions of the story add that he offered to bear any penance 
that might be put upon him for his presumption, and was 
ready to incur any penalty to secure this great boon. It 
can never be put to proof in this world whether Gregory's 
petition was heard or not, but his monks and biographers 
were sure of it, and some of them allege that his own bodily 



144 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

sufferings and weakness were the penalty which he accepted 
gladly for the salvation of that great soul. The story 
proves at least the intense humanity and yearning over the 
unhappy, which was in his heart. Whether he played and 
punned in tender humour with the objects of his sympathy, 
or so flung himself in profoundest compassion into the abyss 
of hopelessness with them, that he could wish himself like 
Paul accursed for his brethren's sake — Gregory's being- 
was full of brotherly love and fervent feeling, a love which 
penetrated even beyond the limits of visible life. 

The four years that elapsed between his return to his 
convent and his election to the Popedom (or to speak more 
justly the bishopric of Pome) were years of trouble. In 
addition to the constant danger of invasion, the misery, 
even when that was escaped, of the tales brought to Pome 
by the fugitives who took refuge there from all the sur- 
rounding country, in every aggravation of poverty and 
wretchedness, and the efforts that had to be made for their 
succour — a great inundation of the Tiber, familiar yet 
terrible disaster, from which Rome has not even now been 
able to secure herself, took place towards the end of the 
period, followed by a terrible pestilence, its natural result. 
Gregory was expounding the prophet Ezekiel in one of the 
Poman churches at the time of this visitation : but as the 
plague increased his sorrowful soul could not bear any 
bondage of words or thoughts apart from the awful needs 
of the moment, and closing the book, he poured forth his 
heart to the awed and trembling people, exhorting all to 
repent, and to fling themselves upon God's mercy that the 
pestilence might be stayed. In all such terrible emer- 
gencies it is the impulse of human nature to take refuge 
in something that can be done, and the impulse is no doubt 
itself of use to relieve the crushing weight of despair, 
whatever may be the form it takes. 

We clean and scrub and whitewash in our day, and 



».] 



GREGORY THE GREAT 



145 



believe in these ways of arresting the demons ; but in old 
Rome the call for help was more impressive at least, and 
probably braced the souls of the sufferers as even whitewash 
could not do. The manner in which Gregory essayed to 
turn the terrible tide was by a direct appeal to Heaven. 
He organised a great simultaneous procession from all the 
quarters of Some to meet at " the Church of the Virgin " 
— we are not informed which — in one great united outcry 










SAN GREGORIO MAGNO, AND ST. JOHN AND ST. PAUL. 



to God for mercy. The septiform litany, as it was called, 
was chanted through the desolate streets by gradually 
approaching lines, the men married and unmarried, the 
priests and monks each approaching in a separate band; 
while proceeding from other churches came the women in 
all their subdivisions, the wives, the widows, the maidens, 
the dedicated virgins, Ancillee Dei, each line converging 
towards the centre, each followed no doubt from windows 
within which the dying lay with tears and echoes of prayers. 
Many great sights there have been in old Rome, but few 



146 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

could have been more melancholy or impressive than this. 
We hear of no miraculous picture, no saintly idol as in 
later ceremonials, but only the seven processions with their 
long-drawn monotones of penitence, the men by themselves, 
the women by themselves, the widows in their mourning, 
the veiled nuns, the younger generation, boys and girls, 
most precious of all. That Gregory should have had the 
gift to see, or believe that he saw, a shining angel upon 
Hadrian's tomb, pausing and sheathing his sword as the 
long line of suppliants drew near, is very soothing and 
human to think of. Fresh from his studies of Ezekiel or 
Job, though too sick at heart with present trouble to con- 
tinue them, why should he have doubted that the Hearer of 
Prayer might thus grant a visible sign of the acceptance 
which He had promised? We do not expect such visions 
nowadays, nor do we with such intense and united purpose 
seek them ; but the same legend connects itself with many 
such periods of national extremity. So late as the Great 
Plague of London a similar great figure, radiant in celestial 
whiteness, was also reported to be seen as the pestilence 
abated, sheathing, in the same imagery, a blazing sword. 
The story of the septiform litany relates how here and 
there in the streets as they marched the dead and dying fell 
out of the very ranks of the suppliants. But yet the angel 
sheathed his sword. It is hard to recall the splendid monu- 
ment of Hadrian with its gleaming marbles and statues as 
the pilgrim of to-day approaches the vast but truncated and 
heavy round of the Castle of St. Angelo; but it does not 
require so great an effort of the mind to recall that scene, 
when the great angel standing out against the sky existed 
but in Gregory's anxious eyes, and was reflected through 
the tears of thousands of despairing spectators, who stood 
trembling between the Omnipotence which could save in a 
moment and the terrible Death which seized and slew while 
they were looking on. No human heart can refuse to beat 



i.J GREGORY THE GREAT. 147 

quicker at such a spectacle — the good man in his rapture 
of love and earnestness with his face turned to that radiant 
Roman sky, and all the dark lines of people arrested in 
their march gazing too, the chant dying from their lips, 
while the white angel paused for a moment and sheathed 
the sword of judgment over their heads. 

It was not till many centuries later, when every relic of 
the glories of the great Emperor's tomb had been torn from 
its walls, that the angel in marble, afterwards succeeded by 
the present angel in bronze, was erected on the summit of 
the Castle of St. Angelo, which derives from this incident 
its name — a name now laden with many other associations 
and familiar to us all. 

Pope Pelagius was one of the victims of this great plague ; 
and it is evident from all the circumstances recorded that 
Gregory was already the most prominent figure in Borne, 
taking the chief place, not only in such matters as the 
public penitence, but in all the steps necessary to meet so 
great a calamity. Not only were his powers as an adminis- 
trator very great, but he had the faculty of getting at those 
sacred hordes of ecclesiastical wealth, the Church's treasures 
of gold and silver plate, which a secular ruler could not 
have touched. Gregory's own liberality was the best of 
lessons, and though he had already sacrificed so much he 
had yet, it would appear, something of his own still to 
dispose of, as we have already found to be the case in so 
many instances, no doubt rents or produce of estates which 
could not be alienated, though everything they produced 
was freely given up. Already the wealth of the Church 
had been called into requisition to provide for the fugitives 
who had taken refuge from the Lombards in Rome. These 
riches, however, were now almost exhausted by the wants 
of the disorganised commonwealth, where every industry 
and occupation had been put out of gear, and nothing but 
want and misery, enfeebled bodies, and discouraged hearts 



148 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

remained. It was inevitable that at such a time Gregory 
should be the one man to whom every eye turned as the 
successor of Pelagius. The clergy, the nobles, and the 
populace, all accustomed to take a part in the choice of 
the bishop, pronounced for him with one voice. It is a kind 
of fashion among the saints that each one in his turn should 
resist and refuse the honours which it is wished to thrust 
upon him; but there was at least sufficient reason in 
Gregory's case for resistance. For the apostolical see, 
which was far from being a bed of roses at any time, was 
at that period of distress and danger one of the most onerous 
posts in the world. 

Pelagius died in January 590, but it was late in that 
year before his successor was forced into the vacant place. 
In the meantime Gregory had appealed to the Emperor, 
begging that he would oppose the election and support him 
in his resistance. This letter fell into the hands of the 
Praefect of Rome, who intercepted it, and wrote in his own 
name and that of the people a contrary prayer, begging 
the Emperor Maurice to sanction and give authority to 
their choice. It was only when the answer was received 
confirming the election, that Gregory became aware of 
the trick played upon him; and all his natural aversion 
strengthened by this deceitful proceeding, he withdrew 
secretly from the city, hiding himself, it is said, in a cave 
among the woods. Whether this means that he had made 
his way to the hills, and found this refuge among the ruins 
of Tusculum, or in some woodland grotto about Albano, or 
that some of the herdsmen's huts upon the Campagna amid 
the broken arches of the aqueducts received and concealed 
him, it is impossible to tell. It is said that the place of his 
retreat was made known by a light from heaven which made 
an illumination about him in his stony refuge, for the legend 
is unsparing in the breadth of its effects and easily appro- 
priates the large miracle which in the Old Testament attends 



i.] GREGORY THE GREAT. 14& 

the passage of a whole nation to the service of an individual, 
without any of that sense of proportion which is to be found 
in older records. This light suggests somehow the wide 
breadth of the Carnpagna where its distant glow could be 
seen from afar, from the battlements of Rome herself, 
rather than the more distant hills. And we must hope that 
this direct betrayal by Heaven of his hiding-place showed 
Gregory that the appointment against which he struggled 
had in fact the sanction of the higher powers. 

He speaks, however, in many of his works of the great 
repugnance he felt to take the cares of such an office upon 
him. He had allowed himself to be ordained a deacon with 
reluctance, and only apparently on an understanding that 
when the emergency which called for his services was over 
he might be permitted to retire again to his cloister. His 
letter to Leander already referred to is full of the complaint 
that " when the ministry of the altar was so heavy a weight, 
the further burden of the pastoral charge was fastened on 
me, which I now find so much the more difficulty in bearing 
as I feel myself unequal to it, and cannot find consolation 
in any comfortable confidence in myself." To another 
correspondent he remonstrates against the censure he met 
with for having endeavoured to escape from so heavy a 
charge. These hesitations are not like those with which 
it is usual to find the great men of the Church refusing 
honours, since it is no profession of humility which moves 
Gregory, but his overwhelming sense of the difficulties and 
danger to which the chief pastor of the Church would 
necessarily be exposed. His idea of his position is indeed 
very different from that of those who consider him as one 
of the first to conceive the great plan of the papacy, and as 
working sedulously and with intention at the foundations 
of an institution which he expected to last for hundreds of 
years and to sway the fortunes of the world. He was on 
the contrary fully persuaded that all the signs of the times 



150 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

foretold instead, the end of the world and final winding up 
of human history. The apostles had believed so before 
him, and every succeeding age had felt the catastrophe to 
be only for a little while delayed. Nation was rising 
against nation under his very eyes, earthquakes destroying 
the cities of the earth, and pestilence their populations. 
There had been signs in heaven generally reported and 
believed, fiery ranks of combatants meeting in conflict in 
the very skies, and every token of judgment about to fall. 
Little thought was there in his mind of a triumphant and 
potent ecclesiastical economy which should dominate all 
things. "I being unworthy and weak have taken upon me 
the care of the old and battered vessel," he says in one of 
his epistles written soon after his election; "the waves 
make their way in on all sides, and the rotten planks, 
shattered by daily and violent storms, threaten imminent 
shipwreck." An old and battered vessel, it had borne the 
strain of six centuries — a long time to those who knew 
nothing of the ages to come : and now struggled on its way 
beaten by winds and waves, not knowing when the dread- 
ful moment expected by so many generations might come, 
when the sun should be turned into darkness and the moon 
into blood — the only signs that were yet wanting of the 
approach of that great and terrible day. How different 
were these anticipations from any conscious plan of con- 
quest or spiritual empire ; and how much more fully justified 
by all that was happening around that broken, suffering, 
poor, breathless and hopeless capital of the world! 

Yet it is evident enough that this one resolute man, toil- 
ing in every possible way for the protection of the people 
round him, did put a certain heart in the city which had 
come through so many convulsions. Crowded with fugi- 
tives, decimated with pestilence, left for many months 
without any more able head than the half-hearted praetors 
and officials of the state and the distant exarch at Ravenna, 



i.] GREGORY THE GREAT. 151 

with all of whom, according to Gregory's own witness, the 
exaction of taxes was the chief object — a strong and stead- 
fast ruler in the midst of this distracted people changed in 
every way the disposition of affairs. For one thing he 
seems to have taken upon him from the beginning the care 
and nourishment of the poor. It had been the principle of 
the Church from her earliest days that almsgiving was one 
of the first of duties, and the care of the poor her inalienable 
right; but such a time of disaster made something more 
heroic needful than the usual doles and charities. A large 
proportion of the population of Rome came upon Gregory's 
hands to be fed and provided for. Lists of the destitute 
poor, of their houses and circumstances, were kept with the 
greatest care; and we are told that before the Pope sat 
down to any meal the tables for the poor outside were first 
supplied. How dreadful to any philanthropist now this 
straightforward and matter-of-fact feeding of the hungry ! 
but it was the manner of Christianity, most understood and 
approved in the early ages, the one with which even the 
most enlightened of politicians had no fault to find. This 
was the first idea in every evangelical soul, but it was by 
no means the limit of Gregory's exertions. He had learned 
diplomacy as well as charity in the experiences of his past 
life, and every resource of his skill and knowledge were 
needed for the salvation of the otherwise hopeless city. 
In all the dignity of his spiritual office, yet with all the 
arts of a statesman, we can see him standing as it were 
before the gates of Rome, as Horatius stood on the banks 
of the Tiber. It is sometimes to Constantinople, some- 
times to the host of the invaders, that he turns explaining, 
arguing, pleading on one side and another for the safety of 
his city and people. His letters to the Emperor and to the 
Empress on one hand, and those to Queen Theodolinda on 
the other hand, the wife of the invader — show with what 
persistency and earnestness he defended Rome and its 



152 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

people who were his special charge and flock, and who had 
neither ruler nor defender save himself. This was one of 
his ways of establishing the sway of the papacy, it is said; 
it was at the same time, and primarily, the stepping forth 
of the only man who could or would put himself at the 
head of a disorganised and trembling host without leader or 
defender. He, only he, stood fast to strike for them, to 
intercept destruction hanging over their heads, and it would 
be a curious fact indeed in human nature if such a man 
performed his first duty for the sake of an unformed empire 
to come after hundreds of years had passed. He succeeded 
with the barbarians, preserving Eome from the attacks 
which were often threatened but never carried out ; but he 
did little good with Maurice, who on his side had few troops 
to send and no general able to make a successful campaign 
against the Lombards. The officers and the armies of the 
empire were of use in exacting taxes for the imperial treas- 
ury, but not for opposing a vigorous invader or rescuing a 
defenceless people. 

It is never pretended by any of his biographers or ad- 
mirers that Gregory was a man of learning, or even inter- 
ested very much in the preservation of letters, or the progress 
of intellectual life. Learning and philosophy were the in- 
heritance of the Greek Church, which was the very pre- 
sumptuous and arrogant rival of Eome, and the cradle of 
most of the heresies and all the difficult and delicate ques- 
tions which had troubled the peace of the Church. He is 
accused, though without sufficient evidence, of burning a 
library of Latin poets, a thing which he might well have 
done, according to his ideas, without much sense of guilt. 
There has never been an age in which certain books have 
not been liable to that reformation by fire, and the principle 
is quite as strong now as in the sixth century, so we need 
not take pains to exonerate Gregory from such an imputa- 
tion. He did not, like Jerome, love the literature which 




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i.] GREGORY THE GREAT. 155 

was full of classical images and allusions. Neither Cicero 
nor Plato would have tempted him to occupy himself with 
vain studies. " The same mouth," he says, " should not pro- 
nounce the name of Jupiter and that of Christ ; " yet at the 
same time he expresses strong regret that letters had died 
out of E-ome, amid all the tumults through which she had 
passed. Amid the jargon of barbarians heard on every side, 
Greek, he complains, had fallen almost out of knowledge. 
There were few men learned enough to settle a question 
of doctrine by reference to the original text of Scripture. 
" Those we have are good for little but to translate word by 
word ; they are unable to grasp the sense, and it is with diffi- 
culty that we understand their translations." He does not 
take any credit for his own style, which indeed is anything 
but Ciceronian. He complains with great simplicity, at 
the end of his dedication to Leander of his M oralia, of the 
" collisions of metacism," a difficulty about the letter m 
which would seem to have been as troublesome as the let- 
ter h in our own day ; and anticipates criticism by confessing 
that he has neglected the " cases of prepositions." " For I 
account it far from meet," he says, taking as we should say 
in Scotland, " the first word of fly ting," and with a high 
hand, " to submit the words of the Divine Oracle to the rules 
of (the grammarian) Donatus." As who should say Lindley 
Murray has nothing to do with the language of a sermon. 
This was a great deal for a man to say, one of whose early 
feats in life had been the conviction and conversion by argu- 
ment of Eutychius, whose heresy in respect to the body of 
the resurrection (a sufficiently distant and far-off subject to 
disturb the Church about — but such twists of impossible 
doctrine have always affected some minds) survived himself 
— but who acknowledged with his dying breath that he was 
wrong and Gregory right. 

Doctrine, however, was not the point on which Gregory 
was most strong — his Dialogues, written it is said for the 



156 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

edification and strengthening in the faith of the Empress 
Theodolinda, are nothing more than pious discussions and 
sanctions of the miracles performed by the saints, which 
we fear would have a very contrary effect if published in 
our day. His works upon the pastoral law and the disci- 
pline of the Church are the most valuable and important of 
his productions ; though in these also his point of view is 
extraordinarily different from ours, and he advises a kind 
and degree of toleration which is somewhat appalling to hear 
of. For instance, in his instructions to Augustine and his 
band of missionaries Gregory instructs them to interfere as 
little as possible with the customs, especially in the matter 
of religious observances, of the people among whom they 
were sent. They were not to put down the familiar accom- 
paniments of their converts' native rites and ceremonies. 
The old temples of Woden and Thor were not to be aban- 
doned but turned to a new and better use ; even the system 
of sacrifice to these gods was not to be altogether set aside. 
"Let there be no more victims to demons," he says with 
curious casuistry, " but let them kill and eat giving thanks 
to God; for you must leave them some material enjoyments 
that they may so much more easily enter into the delights 
of the soul." On the other hand, his instructions to a bishop 
of Sardinia bear a curiously different character. He recom- 
mended this prelate to put a pressure more or less, gentle 
upon the peasants there who still remained pagan, in the 
form of an increased rent and taxes until such time as 
they should become Christian. "Though conversion does 
not come by force," he says with sagacious cynicism, " yet 
the children of these mercenary converts will receive bap- 
tism in their innocence and will be better Christians than 
their fathers ; " an argument which certainly embodies much 
economic truth if not exactly the spirit of the Gospel. 

Strangely different from these worldly-wise suggestions, 
however, are the detailed instructions for pastoral work. 



!•] 



GREGORY THE GREAT. 



157 



quoted by Bede, in Gregory's answer to the questions of 
Augustine, in which the artificial conscience of the confes- 
sional suddenly appears in full development, by the side of 
those strange counsels of a still semi-pagan age. Nothing 
can be more remarkable than this contrast, which exacts 
a more than Levitical punctilio of observance from the de- 
vout, while leaving open every door for the entrance of the 
profane. Though he entered with so much reluctance upon 













THE PIAZZA DEL POPOLO. 



the pastoral care of the Church, no one has laid down more 
detailed directions for the cure of souls. It would seem to 
have been in reality one of the things which interested him 
most. His mind was in some respects that of a statesman 
full of the broadest sense of expediency and of the practica- 
ble, and of toleration and compromise carried to a length 
which fills us with dismay ; while on the other it was that 
of a parish legislator, an investigator of personal details, to 
whom no trifle was unimportant, and the most fantastic stip- 



158 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

illations of ritualistic purification of as great moment as 
morality itself. 

In contrast however with those letters which recommended 
what was little more than a forced conversion, and which have 
been frequently cited as examples of the unscrupulousness 
of the early missionaries, w r e must here quote some of Greg- 
ory's pastoral instructions in which the true spirit of a pastor 
shines forth. " Nothing," he says in one of his epistles to 
the bishops with whom he kept up constant communications, 
"is so heavy a burden upon a priest as so to bend the 
force of his own mind in sympathy, as to change souls (cum 
personis supervenientibus animam mutare) with each new per- 
son who approaches him ; yet this is very necessary." Noth- 
ing could be more happy in expression or fine in sentiment, and 
it shows how completely the monk-Pope, in cloister and on 
throne, understood the essential character of his great pro- 
fession. Still more remarkable, as more involved in per- 
sonal matters, is his advice to Augustine, who had consulted 
him as to the differences in worship between the Gallican 
churches and those of Rome. 

" You know, my brother, the custom of the Roman Church in which 
you were bred up. But it will please me if when you have found any- 
thing, either in the Roman or Gallican or any other Church, which 
may be more acceptable to Almighty God, you will carefully make 
choice of the same, and sedulously teach the Church of the English, 
which as yet is new in the faith, whatsoever good thing you can gather 
from the several Churches. For things are not to be loved for the sake 
of places, but places for the sake of good things. Choose therefore 
from every Church those things that are pious, religious and upright, 
and when you have as it were made them into one system, let the 
minds of the English be accustomed thereto." 

This is surely the truest and highest toleration. 

The Papacy of Gregory began in trouble and distress; 
Rome was more disorganised, more miserable, more con- 
fused and helpless than almost ever before, although she 
had already passed through many a terrible crisis ; and he 
had shrunk from the terrible task of setting her right. But 



i.] GREGORY THE GREAT. 159 

when he had once undertaken that task there was neither 
weakness nor hesitation in the manner with which he car- 
ried it out. The public penance and humiliation to which 
he moved the people, the septif orm litany with its chanting 
and weeping crowds, the ceaseless prayers and intercessions 
in the Church were not all, though no doubt the chief part 
to Gregory, of those methods by which he sustained the 
courage, or rather put a heart into, the broken-down popu- 
lation, so that for once a show of resistance was made when 
the Lombards threatened the city. And his anxious negoti- 
ations never ceased. The Emperor, far off and indifferent, 
not to say helpless, in Constantinople, had no rest from 
the constant remonstrances and appeals of the ever-watch- 
ful Bishop. Gregory complained and with reason that 
no efforts, or at least but fictitious ones, were made for 
the help of Rome, and that the indifference or hostility 
of the Emperor was more dangerous to her than the arms 
of the Lombards. On the other hand he addressed him- 
self to the headquarters of the invaders, taking as his 
champion — as was his custom, as it has always been the 
custom of the Churchman — the Queen Theodolinda, who 
had become a Catholic and baptized her son in that faith, 
notwithstanding the opposition of her Arian husband, 
and was therefore a very fitting and natural intercessor. 
" What an overwhelming charge it is ! " he cries to one of 
his correspondents, "to be at once weighted with the super- 
vision of the bishops and clergy, of the monasteries and 
the entire people, and to remain all the time watchful to 
every undertaking of the enemy and on my guard against 
the robbery and injustice of our rulers." It was indeed a 
burden under which few men could have stood. 

Gregory appears to have neglected no movement of the 
foe, to have noted every exaction and treachery from Con- 
stantinople, to have remembered every bishop in the fur- 
thest-off regions, and to have directed to each in turn his 



160 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

expostulations, his entreaties, his reproofs. We have been 
told in our own day of the overwhelming weight of business 
(attributed to facilities of post and daily communications) 
which almost crushes an English archbishop, although that 
dignitary besides the care of the Church has but such an 
amount of concern in public matters as a conscientious 
adviser must have. But Gregory was responsible for every- 
thing, the lives and so far as was possible the liberties of 
his city and people, their daily bread, their safety, their very 
existence, besides that cure of souls which was his special 
occupation. The mass of correspondence, which beside all 
his other work he managed to get through, forgetting noth- 
ing, is enough to put any modern writer of hasty notes and 
curt business letters to shame. On this point there may 
be said a word of apology for the much-harassed Pope in 
respect to that one moment in his history, in which his 
conduct cannot be defended by his warmest admirer. His 
prayers and appeals were treated with contempt at Con- 
stantinople, a contempt involving not his own person alone, 
but Eome and the Church, for which the Emperor Maurice 
did not even pretend to care. And when that Emperor was 
suddenly swept away, it is natural enough that a sensation 
of relief, a touch of hope in the new man who, notwith- 
standing the treachery and cruelty of the first step in his 
career, might turn out better than his predecessor, should 
have gleamed across the mind of a distant, and perhaps at 
first imperfectly informed spectator, whose interests were 
so closely concerned. The complacency with which Gregory 
wrote to Phocas, the amazing terms he used to that mur- 
derer and tyrant, will always be the darkest stain on his 
reputation. Under Maurice the ministers of the empire had 
been more oppressive than the invaders. Perhaps under 
Phocas better things might be hoped for. It is all that can 
be said for this unfortunate moment of his career ; but it is 
something nevertheless. 



i.] GREGORY THE GREAT. 1G1 

It was not till 597, when lie had occupied his bishopric 
for seven years, that Gregory succeeded in carrying out the 
long-cherished scheme of the mission to England, which had 
been for many years so near his heart. It is said that he 
himself had purchased some of the captive boys who caught 
his eye in the streets, and trained them in the Christian 
doctrine and faith, in order that they might act as inter- 
preters and commend the missionaries to their people, an 
expedient which has been so largely followed (and of 
course boasted of as an original thought) in recent mis- 
sions. These boys would by this time have attained the 
age of manhood, and perhaps this determined the moment 
at which Augustine and his companions were sent forth. 
They were solemnly consecrated in the chapel of the con- 
vent on the Ccelian hill, Gregory's beloved home, to which 
he always returned with so much affection, and to which 
they also belonged, monks of the same house. Their names 
are inscribed in the porch of the present church after that 
cf their master, with designations strangely familiar to our 
British ears — S. Augustine, Apostle of England; S. Law- 
rence, Archbishop of Canterbury; S. Mellitus, of London 
and Canterbury; S. Justus, of Rochester; S. Paulinus, of 
York, appear in the record, the first teachers and ecclesias- 
tical' dignitaries of Saxon England. The church in which 
this consecration took place exists no longer ; the present 
building, its third or fourth successor, dates only from the 
eighteenth century, and is dedicated to S. Gregory himself ; 
but the little piazza now visited by so many pilgrims is 
unchanged, and it was from this small square, so minute 
a point amid the historic places of Rome, that the mission- 
ary party set forth, Augustine and his brethren kneeling 
below, while the Pope, standing at the head of the steps, 
gave them his parting blessing. No doubt the young 
Angles, with their golden locks of childhood matured into 
russet tones, who had filled Gregory's mind with so many 

M 



162 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

thoughts, were in the group, behind the black-robed Bene- 
dictine brothers whose guides and interpreters they were 
to be. 

This is an association full of interest for every English- 
man, and has attracted many pilgrims from the nation whose 
faith has undergone so many vicissitudes, and in which the 
Pope's authority has been as vehemently decried in one age 
as strongly upheld in another ; but whatever our opinions on 
that point may be, there can be nothing here but affectionate 
and grateful remembrance of the man of God who had so 
long cherished the scheme, which thus at length with fatherly 
benedictions and joy at heart, he was able to carry out. He 
himself would fain have gone on this mission many years 
before ; but the care of all the Churches, and the tribulations 
of a distracted world, had made that for ever impossible, and 
he was now growing old, in feeble health, and with but a 
few years of work before him. The hearts of the mission- 
aries were not so strong as that of this great Servant of the 
servants of God who sent them away with his blessing. 
Terrors of the sea and terrors of the wilds, the long journey 
and the savage tribes at the end of it, were in their hearts. 
When they had got nearly over their journey and were rest- 
ing a little to recover their health among the Gauls, — fierce 
enough indeed, but still with sanctuaries of peace and holy 
brethren among them — before crossing the terrible channel, 
Augustine wrote beseeching letters, begging to be recalled. 
But let us hope that at the moment of dedication these ter- 
rors had scarcely yet got hold upon them. And to Gregory 
the occasion was one of unmingled satisfaction and joy. 
The Pope did not in those days wear the white robes which 
distinguish his dignity now. Gregory was presumably in- 
different to such signs and tokens ; for in the portrait of 
him which still exists in the description given of it by John 
the Deacon, he wears a dress scarcely distinguishable from 
the ordinary dress of a layman. But as he stood upon the 



I.] GREGORY THE GREAT. 163 

steps in front of the church, separated from all the attend- 
antSj and raised his hands in blessing, the scene is one that 
any painter might covet, and which to many a visitor from 
these distant islands of the seas will make the little Piazza 
di San Gregorio more interesting in its simplicity than any 
other spot in storied Rome. 

It would occupy too much time to quote here his long and 
careful letters to the bishops of the West generally — from 
Sicily which always seems to have been the object of his 
special care, to those in Gaul and his missionaries in Eng- 
land. That he assumed an unquestioned authority over 
them is clear, an authority which had more or less been 
exercised by the Bishop of Rome for many generations 
before him : and that he was unfeignedly indignant at the 
pretensions of John of Constantinople to be called Uni- 
versal Bishop is also certain. These facts however by no 
means prove that a great scheme of papal authority was the 
chief thing in his mind, underlying all his undertakings. 
When the historians speak of Gregory as spreading the 
supremacy of the Church of Rome by his missions, notably 
by that mission to England of which I have just spoken, 
they forget that the salvation of the souls lying in darkness 
is a motive which has moved men in every age to the great- 
est sacrifices, and that we have no reason in the world to 
believe that it was not the faith of Christ rather than the 
supremacy of Rome which was Gregory's object. The 
Apostles themselves might be said in the same way to have 
been spreading their own supremacy when they obeyed the 
injunction of their Master to go over the whole world and 
preach the Gospel to every creature. The one sovereignty 
was actually implied in the other — but it requires a very 
robust faith in a preconceived dogma, and a very small under- 
standing of human nature, to be able to believe that when 
the meditative monk paused in his walk, with compassion 
and interest, to look at the angelic boys, and punned tenderly 



164 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

with, tears in his eyes over their names and nation and king, 
the idea immediately sprang up in his mind not that Alle- 
lujah should be sung in the dominions of King Alle, but that 
this wild country lost in the midst of the seas should be 
brought under a spiritual sceptre not yet designed. 

Gregory thought as the Apostles thought, that the days 
of the world were numbered, and that his own generation 
might see its records closed. That is an idea which never 
has stopped any worthy man in undertakings for the good 
of the world — but it was a belief better established, and 
much more according to all the theories and dogmas of the 
age, than a plan of universal dominion for the Church such 
as is attributed to him. He did his duty most energetically 
and strenuously in every direction — never afraid of being 
supposed to interfere, using the prestige of the Apostolical 
See freely for every ecclesiastical purpose. And he became 
prince in Borne, an absolute sovereign by stress of circum- 
stance and because every other rule and authority had 
failed. Whether these practical necessities vaguely formed 
themselves into visions of spiritual empire before the end 
of his life it is impossible to tell: as it is equally impos- 
sible to tell what dreams of happiness or grandeur may 
enter into any poor man's brain. But so large and world- 
embracing a plan seldom springs fully formed into any 
mind, and in his words he never claimed, nay, vehemently 
denied and repudiated, any pretension of the kind. It is 
curious how difficult it is to get the world to believe that a 
man placed in a position of great responsibility, at the 
head of any institution, is first of all actuated by the desire 
of doing his work, whatever the ulterior results may be. 

Gregory's activity was boundless, though his health was 
weak, and his sufferings many. Fastings in his youth and 
neglect at all times told early upon his constitution. The 
dinner of herbs which his mother sent him daily, and which 
is sometimes described as uncooked — salad to wit, which 



i.] GREGORY THE GREAT. 165 

enters so largely into the sustenance of the Italian poor — ■ 
is a kind of fare which does not suit a delicate digestion; 
but he spared himself nothing on this account, though he 
had reached such a pitch of weakness that he was at last, 
as he bitterly laments, unable to fast at all, even on Easter 
Eve, when even little children abstain from food. Beside 
all the labours which I have already noted, there remains 
one detail which has done perhaps more to make the com- 
mon world familiar with his name than all the rest; and that 
is the reformation in music which he accomplished among 
all his other labours. Church music is the only branch of 
the art of which we have any authentic record which dates 
so far back, and the Gregorian chant still exists among 
us, with that special tone of wailing mingled with its solemn 
measures which is characteristic of all primitive music. 

"Four scales," says Mr. Helmore in The Dictionary of Ilusic, 
"traditionally ascribed to St. Ambrose, existed before the time of St. 
Gregory. These, known as the Authentic Modes, and since the thir- 
teenth century named after the ancient Greek scales from which they 
were supposed to be derived, are as follows : 1, Dorian ; 2, Phrygian ; 
3, Lydian ; 4, Mixo-Lydian. To the four Authentic St. Gregory added 
four Plagal, i.e. collateral or relative Modes. Each is a fourth below 
its corresponding original, and is called by the same name with the 
prefix hypo (i>7r6, below), as follows: 5, Hypo-Dorium; 6, Hypo- 
Phrygian; 7, Hypo-Lydian; 8, Hypo-Mixo-Lydian. . . . Handel's 
' Hanover ' among modern tunes, which ranges from F to F has its 
finale on B|?. ' Should auld acquaintance be forgot ' is also a specimen 
of a tune in a Plagal Mode descending about a fourth below its final, 
and rising above it only six notes, closing upon the final of its tone." 

This may be a little too learned for the ordinary reader, 
but it is interesting to find how far the influence of the 
busy old Pope, who had a finger in every pie, could go. 
There is a very curious commentary by John the Deacon, 
Gregory's later biographer, upon this new musical system 
and its adoption throughout Europe, which makes a good 
pendant to the scientific description. The Italians seem 
then as now to have had a poor opinion of German modes 
of singing. 



166 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

♦ 
"This music was learned easily by the Germans and Gauls, but they 
could not retain it because of making additions of their own, and also 
because of their barbarous nature. Their Alpine bodies resounding 
to their depths with the thunders of their voices, do not properly give 
forth the sweetness of the modulation, the savage roughness of their 
bibulous throat when it attempts to give forth a delicate strain, pro- 
ducing rather harsh sounds with a natural crash, as of waggons sound- 
ing confusedly over the scales." 

This is not flattering; but one can imagine something 
very like it coming from the lips of an Italian Maestro in 
our own day. The tradition goes that Gregory himself 
instructed the choristers, for whom he had established 
schools endowed each with its little property, one in the 
precincts of St. Peter's, the other in those of St. John 
Lateran, where his own residence was. And a couch is still 
shown on which he lay while giving or superintending their 
lessons, and even the whip with which he is said to have 
threatened the singers when they made false notes. The 
last is little in accord with the Pope's character, and we 
can scarcely imagine the twang through the air of any whip 
in Gregory's hand : but it is probably as true as other more 
agreeable circumstances of the legend. One can scarcely 
believe however that amid his multitudinous occupations he 
could have had time for more than a flying visit to the 
schools, however they might interest him. 

Nor did he limit his exertions on behalf of ritual to the 
arrangement of the music. We are told that the Missal of 
Pope Gelasius then used in the Church was revised by him, 
and that he took away much, altered some things and added 
a little, among other things a confession of faith or Credo 
of his own writing, which is something between the Atha- 
nasian and Nicene Creeds. The Ordinary of the Mass 
remains now, another authority tells us, very much as it 
came from his hands. Thus his immediate authority and 
the impress of his mind remain on things which are still in 
daily use. 

And there could be no more familiar or characteristic fig- 



!•] 



GREGORY THE GREAT. 



167 



ure in Rome than that of this monk-Pope threading every- 
where those familiar streets, in which there were more 
ruins, and those all fresh and terrible in their suggestions 
of life destroyed — than now ; the gentle spectator full of 
meditation, who lingered among the group of slaves, and 
saw and loved and smiled at the Saxon boys : who passed 
by Trajan's Forum which we all know so well, that field 
of broken pillars, not then railed off and trim in all the 




MONTE PINCIO, FROM THE PIAZZA DEL POPOLO. 



orderliness of an outdoor museum, but wild in the neglect 
of nature : and heard the story of the Emperor, and loved 
him too, and poured out his soul to God for the great 
heathen, so that the gates of Hades were rolled back and 
the soul set free — strange parable of brotherly kindness as 
the dominant principle of heart and life. We can follow 
him through all the lists of the poor laid up in his Scrivii, 
like the catalogues of books enclosed in caskets, in an old- 
fashioned library — with careful enumeration of every half- 



168 THE MAKERS OP MODERN ROME. [chap. 

ruined tenement and degraded palace where the miserable 
had found shelter: or passing among the crowds who 
received their portions before, not after, the Pope in the 
precincts of the great basilica; or "modulating," with a 
voice broken by age and weakness, the new tones of his 
music which the " bibulous throats " of the barbarian con- 
verts turned into thunder, and of which even his own chor- 
isters, careless as is their use, would make discords, till the 
whip of the Master trembled in the air, adding the sting of 
a sharper sound to the long-drawn notes of the monotone, 
and compelling every heedless tenor and frivolous soprano 
to attention. These are his simpler aspects, the lower life 
of the great Benedictine, the picture of the Pope as he 
endeared himself to the popular imagination, round which 
all manner of tender legends grew. His aspect is less 
familiar yet not less true as he sits at the head of affairs, 
dictating or writing with his own hand those innumerable 
letters which treat of every subject under heaven, from the 
safety of Rome to the cross which is to be hung round a 
royal infant's neck, or the amethyst ring for the finger of 
a little princess ; from the pretensions of John of Constan- 
tinople, that would-be head of the Church, down to the ass 
sent by the blundering intendant from Sicily. Nothing 
was too great, nothing too little for his care. He had to 
manage the mint and cummin without leaving graver mat- 
ters undone. 

And the reader who has leisure may follow him into the 
maze of those Dialogues in which Peter the Deacon serves 
as questioner, and the Pope discourses gently, to improve 
his ignorance, of all the wonderful things which the saints 
have done, chiefly in Italy, turning every law of nature 
upside down : or follow him through the minute and end- 
less rules of his book of discipline, and note the fine-drawn 
scruples with which he has to deal, the strange cases of con- 
science for which he provides, the punctilio of extravagant 



i.] GREGORY THE GREAT. 169 

penitence, so strangely contrasted with the other rough and 
ready modes of dealing with the unconverted, to which 
he gives the sanction of his recommendation. He was a 
man of his time, not of ours : he flattered Phocas while his 
hands were still wet with his predecessor's blood — though 
we may still hope that at such a distance Gregory did not 
know all that had happened or what a ruffian it was whom 
he thus addressed. He wrote affectionately and with devo- 
tion to Queen Brunhild without inquiring into that lady's 
character, which no doubt he knew perfectly. Where the 
good of Borne, either the city or the Church, was concerned, 
he stopped at nothing. I have no desire to represent him as 
faultless. But the men who are faultless, if any are to be 
found, leave but a limited record, and there is little more to 
say of perfection than that it is perfect. Gregory was not so. 
He got very angry sometimes, with bishops in Sicily, with 
stupid intendants, above all with that Eastern John — and 
sometimes, which is worse, he was submissive and compliant 
when he ought to have been angry and denounced a crimi- 
nal. But on the other hand he was the first of the great 
ecclesiastical princes who have made Modern Borne illus- 
trious — he was able, greatest of miracles, to put a heart 
into the miserable city which had allowed herself to be 
overrun by every savage : and stood between her and all 
creation, giving the whole world assurance of a man, and 
fighting for her with every weapon that came to his hand. 
Doing whatsoever he found to do thoroughly well, he laid 
the foundations of that great power which still extends over 
the whole world. I do not believe that he acted on any 
plan or had the supremacy of the Pontificate in his mind, 
or had conceived any idea of an ecclesiastical empire which 
should grasp the universe. To say, for instance, that the 
mission to England which he had cherished so long was 
undertaken with the idea of extending the sway of the 
Papacy seems one of those follies of the theorist which 



170 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

requires no answer. St. Paul might as well be accused of 
intending to spread a spiritual empire when he saw in his 
dream that man of Macedonia, and immediately directed 
his steps thither, obeying the vision. What Gregory hoped 
and prayed for was to bring in a new nation, as he judged 
a noble and vigorous race, to Christianity. And he suc- 
ceeded in doing so: with such secondary consequences as 
the developments of time, and the laws of progress, and the 
course of Providence brought about. 

There is a certain humour in the indignation, which has 
been several times referred to, with which he turned against 
the Patriarch of Constantinople and his pretensions to a 
supremacy which naturally was in the last degree obnox- 
ious to the Bishop of Pome. The Eastern and Western 
Churches had already diverged widely from each other, the 
one nourished and subdued under the shadow of a Court, in 
a leisure which left it open to every refinement and every 
temptation, whether of asceticism or heresy — both of which 
abounded : the other fighting hard for life amid the rudest 
and most practical dangers, obliged to work and fight like 
jSTehemiah on the walls of Jerusalem with the tool in one 
hand and the sworcl in the other. John the Paster, so dis- 
tinguished because of the voluntary privations which he 
imposed upon himself, forms one of the most startling con- 
trasts of this age with Gregory, worn by work and warfare, 
whose spare and simple meal could not be omitted even on 
the eve of Easter. That he who, sitting in St. Peter's seat, 
with all the care of Church and country upon his shoulders, 
obeyed by half the world, yet putting forth in words no 
such pretension — should be aggrieved almost beyond endur- 
ance by the dignity conferred on, or assumed by, the other 
bishop, whose see was not apostolical but the mere creation 
of an emperor, and the claim put forth by him and the 
Council called by him for universal obedience, is very 
natural; yet Gregory's wrath has a fiercely human sense of 









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I.] GREGORY THE GREAT. 173 

injury in it, an aggrieved individuality to which we cannot 
deny our sympathy. ''There is no doubt," he says with 
dignity, writing to the Emperor on the subject, "that the 
keys of heaven were given to Peter, the power of binding 
and loosing, and the care of the whole Church; and yet he 
is not called Universal Apostle. Nor does it detract from 
the honour of the See that the sins of Gregory are so great 
that he ought to suffer ; for there are no sins of Peter that 
he should be treated thus. The honour of Peter is not to 
be brought low because of us who serve him unworthily." 
" Oh tempora, oh mores ! " he exclaims ; " Europe lies pros- 
trate under the power of the barbarians. Its towns are 
destroyed, its fortresses thrown down, its provinces depopu- 
lated, the soil has no longer labourers to till it ; and yet 
priests who ought to humble themselves with tears in the 
dust strive after vain honours and glorify themselves with 
titles new and profane ! " To John himself he writes with 
more severity, reminding him of the vaunt of Lucifer in 
Isaiah, "I will exalt my throne above the stars of heaven." 
Now bishops, he says, are the stars of heaven, they shine 
over men; they are clouds (the metaphors are mixed) that 
rain words and are lighted up by the rays of good works. 
"What, then," he asks, "is the act of your paternity, in 
looking down upon them and pressing them into subjection, 
but following the example of the ancient enemy? When I 
see this I weep that the holy man, the Lord John, a man so 
renowned for self-sacrifice, should so act. Certainly Peter 
was first in the whole Church. Andrew, James, and the 
others were but heads of the people ; yet all made up one 
body, and none were called Universal." 

The argument with which Gregory replies to a letter from 
Eulogius, Bishop of Alexandria, who had wished him to 
assume himself a similar title, is curious. The Apostolical 
See, he says, consists of three bishoprics, all held by St. 
Peter, that of Antioch, that of Alexandria, and that of 



174 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

Rome, and the honour of the title is shared between them. 
"If you give me more than my due," he adds, "you rob 
yourself. If I am named Pope, you own yourself to be no 
pope. Let no such thing be named between us. My honour 
is the honour of the Universal Church. I am honoured in 
the honour paid to my brethren." Nothing could be more 
determined than this oft -repeated refusal. Yet he never 
fails to add that it was Peter's right. The Council of 
Chalcedon, he says, offered that supreme title to the 
Church of Rome, which refused it. How much greater 
then, was the guilt of John, to whom it was never offered, 
but who assumed it, injuring all priests by setting himself 
above them, and the Empire itself by a position superior 
to it ? Such were the sentiments of Gregory, in which the 
wrath of a natural heir, thus supplanted by a usurper, gives 
fervour to every denunciation. The French historian Ville- 
main points out, what will naturally occur to the reader, 
that many of these arguments were afterwards used with 
effect by Luther and his followers against the assumptions 
of the Church of Rome. It will also be remembered that 
Jerome put the case more strongly still, denouncing the 
Scarlet Woman with as much fervour as any No-Popery 
orator. 

But while he rejected all such titles and assumed for 
himself only that, conceived no doubt in all humility and 
sincere meaning, but afterwards worn with pride surpass- 
ing that of any earthly monarch, of Servus Servorum Dei, 
the servant of the servants of God, Gregory occupied him- 
self, as has been said, with the care of all the churches in 
full exercise of the authority and jurisdiction of an over- 
seer, at least over the western half of Christendom. Vain 
titles he would have none, and we cannot doubt his sin- 
cerity in rejecting them; but the reality of the pastoral 
supervision, never despotic, but continual, was clearly his 
idea of his own rights and duties. It has been seen what 



i.] GREGORY THE GREAT. 175 

license he left to Augustine in the regulation of the new 
English Church. He acted with an equally judicious liber- 
ality in respect to the rich and vigorous Gallican bishops, 
never demanding too servile an obedience, but never inter- 
mitting his superintendence of all. But he does not seem 
to have put forth the smallest pretension to political inde- 
pendence, even when that was forced upon him by his 
isolated and independent position, and he found himself 
compelled to make his own terms with the Lombard in- 
vaders. At the moment of his election as Bishop of Rome, 
he appealed to the Emperor against the popular appoint- 
ment, and only when the imperial decision was given 
against him allowed himself to be dragged from his soli- 
tude. And one of his accusations against John of Constan- 
tinople was that his assumption injured the very Empire 
itself in its supreme authority. Thus we may, and indeed 
I think must, conclude that Gregory's supposed theory of 
the universal papal power was as little real as are most 
such elaborate imputations of purpose conceived long be- 
fore the event. He had no intention, so far as the evidence 
goes, of making himself an arbitrator between kings, and 
a judge of the world's actions and movements. He had 
enough and too much work of his own which it was his 
determination to do, as vigorously and with as much effect 
as possible — in the doing of which work it was necessary 
to influence, to conciliate, to appeal, as well as to command 
and persuade : to make terms with barbarians, to remon- 
strate with emperors, as well as to answer the most minute 
questions of the bishops, and lay out before them the 
proper course they were to pursue. There is nothing so 
easy as to attribute deep-laid plans to the great spirits 
among men. I do not think that Gregory had time for 
any such ambitious projects. He had to live for the peo- 
ple dependent upon him, who were a multitude, to defend, 
feed, guide and teach them. He had never an unoccupied 



176 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

moment, and he did in each moment work enough for half 
a dozen men. That it was his duty to superintend and 
guide everything that went on, so far as was wise or prac- 
ticable, in the Church .as well as in his immediate diocese, 
was clearly his conviction, and the reader may find it a 
little difficult to see why he should have guarded that 
power so jealously, yet rejected the name of it : but that 
is as far as any reasonable criticism can go. 

What would seem an ancient complaint against Gregory 
appears in the sketch of his life given by Platina, in his 
Lives of the Popes — who describes him as having been 
"censured by a few ignorant men as if the ancient stately 
buildings were demolished by his order, lest strangers com- 
ing out of devotion to Rome should less regard the conse- 
crated places, and spend all their gaze upon triumphal 
arches and monuments of antiquity." This curious accusa- 
tion is answered by the author in words which I quote 
from an almost contemporary translation very striking in 
its forcible English. " No such reproach," says Platina in 
the vigorous version of Sir Paul Bycant, Knight, " can justly 
be fastened on this great Bishop, especially considering that 
he was a native of the city, and one to whom, next after 
God, his country was most dear, even above his life. 'Tis 
certain that many of those ruined structures were devoured 
by time, and many might, as we daily see, be pulled down 
to build new houses; and for the rest 'tis probable that, 
for the sake of the brass used in the concavity of the 
arches and the conjunctures of the marble or other square 
stones, they might be battered or defaced not only by the 
barbarous nations but by the Romans too, if Epirotes, Dal- 
matians, Pannonians, and other sorry people who from all 
parts of the world resorted hither, may be called Romans." 

This is a specious argument which would not go far toward 
establishing Gregory's innocence were he seriously accused: 
but the accusation, like that of burning classical manuscripts, 



i.] GREGORY THE GREAT. 177 

lias no proof. Little explanation, however, is necessary to 
acconnt for the ruins of a city which has undergone several 
sieges. That Gregory would have helped himself freely as 
everybody did, and has done in all ages, to the materials 
lying so conveniently at hand in the ruined palaces which 
nobody had any mission to restore, may be believed without 
doubt ; for he was a man far too busy and preoccupied to 
concern himself with questions of Art, or set any great price 
upon the marble halls of patrician houses, however interest- 
ing might be their associations or beautiful their structure. 
But he built few new churches, we are expressly told, 
though he was careful every year to look into the condition 
of all existing ecclesiastical buildings and have them repaired. 
It seems probable that it might be a later Gregory however 
against whom this charge was made. In the time of Gregory 
the First these ruins were recent, and it was but too likely 
that at any moment a new horde of unscrupulous iconoclasts 
might sweep over them again. 

There came however a time when the Pope's suffering and 
emaciated body could bear no longer that charge which was 
so burdensome. He had been ill for many years, suffering 
from various ailments and especially from weakness of diges- 
tion, and he seems to have broken down altogether towards 
the year 601. Agelulphus thundering at his gates had com- 
pleted what early fastings and the constant work of a labo- 
rious life had begun, and at sixty Gregory took to his bed, 
from which, as he complains in one of his letters, he was 
scarcely able to rise for three hours on the great festivals of 
the Church in order to celebrate Mass. He was obliged also 
to conclude abruptly that commentary on Ezekiel which had 
been so often interrupted, leaving the last vision of the 
prophet unexpounded, which he regretted the more that it 
was one of the most dark and difficult, and stood in great 
need of exposition. " But how," he says, " can a mind full 
of trouble clear up such dark meanings ? The more the 



178 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

mind is engaged with worldly things the less is it quali- 
fied to expound the heavenly." It was from Ezekiel that 
Gregory was preaching when the pestilence which swept 
away his predecessor Pelagius was raging in Rome, and 
when, shutting the book which was no longer enough with 
its dark sayings to calm the troubles of the time, he had 
called out to the people, with a voice which was as that of 
their own hearts, to repent. All his life as Pope had been 
threaded through with the study of this prophet. He closed 
the book again and finally when all Rome believed that 
another invasion was imminent, and his courage failed in 
this last emergency. It is curious to associate the name of 
such a man, so full of natural life and affection, so humor- 
ous, so genial, so ready to take interest in everything that 
met his eyes, with these two saddest figures in all the 
round of sacred history, the tragic patriarch Job, and the 
exiled prophet, who was called upon to suffer every sorrow 
in order to be a sign to his people and generation. Was it 
that the very overflowing of life and sympathy in him made 
Gregory seek a balance to his own buoyant spirit in the 
plaints of those two melancholy voices ? or was it the mis- 
fortunes of his time, so distracted and full of miserable 
agitation, which directed him at least to the latter, the 
prophet of a fallen nation, of disaster and exile and peni- 
tence ? 

Thus he lay after his long activities, suffering sorely, and 
longing for the deliverance of death, though he was not 
more, it is supposed, than sixty-two when the end came. 
From his sick bed he wrote to many of his friends entreat- 
ing that they would pray for him that his sufferings might 
be shortened and his sins forgiven. He died finally on the 
12th of March, ever afterwards consecrated to his name, in 
the year 603. This event must have taken place in the 
palace at the Later an, which was then the usual dwelling of 
the Popes. Here the sick and dying man could look out upon 



i.] GREGORY THE GREAT. 179 

one of the finest scenes on earth, the noble line of the Alban 
Hills rising over the great plains of the Campagna, with all 
its broken lines of aqueduct and masses of ruin. The feat- 
ures of the landscape are the same, though every accessory 
is changed, and palace and basilica have both crumbled into 
the dust of ages, to be replaced by other and again other 
buildings, handing down the thread of historic continuity 
through all the generations. There are scarcely any remains 
of the palace of the Popes itself, save one famous mosaic, 
copied from a still earlier one, in which a recent learned 
critic sees the conquest of the world by papal Rome already 
clearly set forth. But we can scarcely hope that any thought 
of the first Gregory will follow the mind of the. reader into 
the precincts of St. John of the Lateran Gate. His memory 
abides in another place, in the spot where stood his father's 
house, where he changed the lofty chambers of the Eoman 
noble into Benedictine cells, and lived and wrote and mused 
in the humility of an obedient brother. But still more does 
it dwell in the little three-cornered piazza before the Church 
of St. Gregorio, from whence he sent forth the mission to 
England with issues which he could never have divined — 
for who could have told in those days that the savage Angles 
would have overrun the world further than ever Roman 
standard was carried ? The shadow of the great Pope is 
upon those time-worn steps where he stood and blessed his 
brethren, with moisture in his eyes and joy in his heart, 
sending them forth upon the difficult and dangerous way 
which he had himself desired to tread, but from which their 
spirits shrank. We have all a sacred right to come back 
here, to share the blessing of the saint, to remember the 
constant affection he bore us ? his dedication of himself had 
it been permitted, his never-ending thought of his angel 
boys which has come to such wonderful issues. He would 
have been a more attractive apostle than Augustine had he 
carried out his first intention ; but still we find his image 



180 



THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. 



[CH. I. 



here, fatherly, full of natural tenderness, interest and sym- 
pathy, smiling back upon us over a dozen centuries which 
have changed everything — except the historical record of 
Pope Gregory's blessing and his strong desire and hope. 

He was buried in St. Peter's with his predecessors, but 
his tomb, like so many others, was destroyed at the rebuild- 
ing of the great church, and no memorial remains. 



cv 







PONTE MOLLE. 




THE PALATINE. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE MONK HILDEBRAND. 



IT is a melancholy thing looking back through the long 
depths of history to find how slow the progress is, even 
if it can be traced at all, from one age to another, and how, 
though the dangers and the evils to which they are liable 
change in their character from time to time, their gravity, 
their hurtfulness, and their rebellion against all that is best 
in morals, and most advantageous to humanity, scarcely 
diminish, however completely altered the conditions may 
be. We might almost doubt whether the vast and as yet 
undetermined possibilities of the struggle which has begun 
in our days between what is called Capital and Labour, the 
theories held against all experience and reason of a rising 
Socialism, and the mad folly of Anarchism, which is their 
immediate climax — are not quite as dangerous to the peace 

181 



182 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

of nations as were the tumults of an age when every man 
acted by the infallible rule that 

He should take who had the power 
And he should keep who can — 

the principle being entirely the same, though the methods 
may be different. This strange duration of trouble, equal 
in intensity though different in form, is specially manifest 
in a history such as that which we take up from one age to 
another in so remarkable a development of life and gov- 
ernment as Mediaeval Rome. We leave the city relieved 
of some woes, soothed from some troubles, fed by much 
charity, and weeping apparently honest tears over Gregory 
the first of the name — although that great man was scarcely 
dead before the crowd was taught to believe that he had 
impoverished the city by feeding them, and were scarcely 
prevented from burning his library as a wise and fit re- 
venge. Still it might have been expected that Rome and 
her people would have advanced a step upon the pedestal 
of such a life as that of Gregory : and in fact he left many 
evils redressed, the commonwealth safer, and the Church 
more pure. 

But when we turn the page and come, four hundred years 
later, to the life of another Gregory, upon what a tumultu- 
ous world do we open our eyes : what blood, what fire, what 
shouts and shrieks of conflict : what cruelty and shame have 
reigned between, and still remained, ever stronger than 
any influence of good men, or amelioration of knowledge ! 
Heathenism, save that which is engrained in the heart of 
man, had passed away. There were no more struggles with 
the relics of the classical past: the barbarians who came 
down in their hordes to overturn civilisation had changed 
into settled nations, with all the paraphernalia of state and 
great imperial authority — shifting indeed from one race to 
another, but always upholding a central standard. All the 



ii.] THE MONK HILDEBRAND. 183 

known world was nominally Christian. It was full of 
monks dedicated to the service of God, of priests, the ad- 
ministrants of the sacraments, and of bishops as important 
as any secular nobles — yet what a scene is that upon which 
we look out through endless smoke of battle and clashing of 
swords ! Rome, at whose gates Alaric and Attila once thun- 
dered, was almost less secure now, and less easily visited 
than when Huns and Goths overran the surrounding coun- 
try. It was encircled by castles of robber nobles, who 
infested every road, sometimes seizing the pilgrims bound 
for Home, with their offerings great and small, sometimes 
getting possession of these offerings in a more thorough way 
by the election of a subject Pope taken from one of their 
families, and always ready oh every occasion to thrust their 
swords into the balance and crush everything like freedom 
or purity either in the Church or in the city. In ■ the early 
part of the eleventh century there were two if not three 
Popes in Pome. " Benedict IX. officiated in the church of 
St. John Lateran, Sylvester III. in St. Peter's, and John XX. 
in the church of St. Mary," says Yillemain in his life of 
Hildebrand : the name of the last does not appear in the 
lists of Platina, but the fact of this profane rivalry is beyond 
doubt. 

The conflict was brought to an end for the moment by a 
very curious transaction. A certain dignified ecclesiastic, 
Gratiano by name, the Cardinal-archdeacon of St. John 
Lateran, who happened to be rich, horrified by this struggle, 
and not sufficiently enlightened as to the folly and sin 
of doing evil that good might come — always, as all the 
chronicles seem to allow, with the best motives — bought 
out the two competitors, and procured his own election 
under the title of Gregory VI. But this mistaken though 
well-meant act had but brief success. Por, on the arrival in 
1046 of the Emperor Henry III. in Italy, at a council called 
together by his desire, Gregory was convicted of the strange 



184 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

bargain he had made, or according to Baronius of the vio- 
lent means taken to enforce it, and was deposed accord- 
ingly, along with his two predecessors. It was this Pope, 
in his exile and deprivation, who first brought in sight of a 
universe which he was born to rule, a young monk of Cluny, 
Hildebrand — German by name, but Italian in heart and 
race — who had already moved much about the world with 
the extraordinary freedom and general access everywhere 
which we find common to monks however humble their 
origin. From his monastic home in Rome he had crossed 
the Alps more than once ; he had been received and made 
himself known at the imperial court, and was on terms of 
kindness with many great personages, though himself but 
a humble brother of his convent. No youthful cleric in our 
modern world nowadays would find such access everywhere, 
though it is still possible that a young Jesuit for instance, 
noted by his superiors for ability or genius, might be handed 
on from one authority to another till he reached the highest 
circle. But it is surprising to see how free in their move- 
ments, how adventurous in their lives, the young members 
of a brotherhood bound under the most austere rule then 
found it possible to be. 

Hildebrand was, like so many other great Churchmen, a 
child of the people. He was the son of a carpenter in a 
Tuscan village, who, however, possessed one of those ties 
with the greater world which a clergy drawn from the people 
affords to the humblest, a brother- or other near relation 
who was the superior of a monastery in Borne. There the 
little Tuscan peasant took his way in very early years to 
study letters, having already given proof of great intelligence 
such as impressed the village and called forth prophecies of 
the highest advancement to come. His early education 
brings us back to the holy mount of the Aventine, on which 
we have already seen so many interesting assemblies. The 
monastery of St. Mary has endured as little as the house 



ii.] • THE MONK HILDEBRAND. 185 

of Marcella, though, it is supposed that iu the church of 
S. Maria Aveutiua there may still remain some portion of 
the original buildings. But the beautiful garden of the Pri- 
orato, so great a favourite with the lovers of the picturesque, 
guards for us, in that fidelity of nature which time cannot 
discompose, the very spot where that keen-eyed boy must 
have played, if he ever played, or at least must have dreamed 
the dreams of an ambitious young visionary, and perhaps, 
as he looked out musing to where the tombs of the Apostles 
gleamed afar on the other side of Tiber, have received 
the inheritance of that long hope and vision which had 
been slowly growing in the minds of Popes and priests — 
the hope of making the Church the mistress and arbiter of 
the nations, the supreme and active judge among all tumults 
of earthly politics and changes of power. He was nourished 
from his childhood in the house of St. Peter, says the 
biographer of the Acta Sanctorum. It would be more easy 
to realise the Apostle's sway, and that of his successors, on 
that mount of vision, where day and night, by sun and 
moon, the great temple of Christendom, the centre of spiritual 
life, shone before his eyes, than on any other spot. That 
wonderful visionary sovereignty, the great imagination of a 
central power raised above all the disturbances of worldly 
life, and judging austerely for right and against wrong all 
the world over — unbiassed, unaffected by meaner motives, 
the great tribunal from which justice and mercy should go 
forth over the whole earth — could there be a more splendid 
ideal to fill the brain of an ardent boy? It is seldom 
that such an ideal is recognised, or such dreams as these 
believed in. We know how little the Papacy has carried it 
out, and how the faults and weaknesses even of great men 
have for many centuries taken all possibility from it. But 
it was while that wonderful institution was still fully pos- 
sible, the devoutest of imaginations, a dream such as had 
never been surpassed in splendour and glory, that young 



186 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap 

Hildebraucl looked out to Peter's prison on the Janiculum 
opposite, and from thence to Peter's tomb, and dreamt of 
Peter's white throne of justice dominating the darkness and 
the self-seeking of an uneasy world. 

The monastery of St. Mary, a Benedictine house, must 
have been noted in its time. Among the teachers who in- 
structed its neophytes was that same Giovanni Gratiano of 
whom we have just spoken, the arch-priest who devoted his 
wealth to the not ignoble purpose of getting rid of two false 
and immoral Popes : though perhaps his motives would 
have been less misconstrued had he not been elected in their 
place. And there was also much fine company at the mon- 
astery in those days — bishops with their suites travelling 
from south and north, seeking the culture and piety of Pome 
after long banishment from intellectual life — and at least 
one great abbot, more important than a bishop, Odilon of 
Cluny, at the head of one of the greatest of monastic com- 
munities. All of these great men would notice, no doubt, 
the young nephew of the superior, the favourite of the clois- 
ter, upon whom many hopes were already beginning to be 
founded, and in whose education every one loved to have a 
hand. One of these bishops was said afterwards to have 
taught him magical arts, which proves at least that they took 
a share in the training of the child of the convent. At 
what age it was that he was transferred to Cluny it is im- 
possible to tell* Dates do not exist in Hildebrand's history 
until he becomes visible in the greater traffic of the world. 
He was born between 1015 and 1020 — this is the nearest 
that we can approach to accuracy. He appears in full light 
of history at the deposition of Gratiano (Gregory VI.) in 
1045. In the meantime he passed through a great many 
developments. Probably the youth — eager to see the world, 
eager too to fulfil his vocation, to enter upon the mortifica- 
tions and self-abasement of a monk's career, and to " subdue 
the flesh " in true monkish fashion, as well as by the fatigues 



ii.] THE MONK HILDEBRAND. 187 

of travel and the acquirement of learning — followed Odilon 
and his train across i monti, a favourite and familiar, when 
the abbot returned from Eome to Cluny. It could not be 
permitted in the monkish chronicles, even to a character 
like that of the austere Hildebrand all brain and spirit, that 
he had no flesh to subdue. And we are not informed whether 
it was at his early home on the Aventine or in the great 
French monastery that he took the vows. The rule of Cluny 
was specially severe. One poor half hour a day was all 
that was permitted to the brothers for rest and conversation. 
But this would not matter much, we should imagine, to 
young Hildebrand, all on fire for work, and full of a thou- 
sand thoughts. 

How a youth of his age got to court, and was heard and 
praised by the great Emperor Henry III., the head of Chris- 
tendom, is not known. Perhaps he went in attendance on 
his abbot, perhaps as the humble clerk of some elder brethren 
bearing a complaint or an appeal ; the legend goes that he 
became the tutor and playfellow of the little prince, Henry's 
son, until the Emperor had a dream in which he saw the 
stranger, with two horns on his head, with one of which he 
pushed his playfellow into the mud — significant and alarm- 
ing vision which was a reasonable cause for the immediate 
banishment of Hildebrand. The dates, however, if nothing 
else, make this story impossible, for the fourth Henry was 
not born within the period named. At all events the young 
monk was sufficiently distinguished to be brought under the 
Emperor's notice and to preach before him, though we are 
not informed elsewhere that Hildebrand had any reputation 
as a preacher. He was no doubt full of earnestness and 
strong conviction, and that heat of youth which is often 
so attractive to the minds of sober men. Henry declared 
that he had heard no man who preached the word of God with 
so much faith : and the imperial opinion must have added 
much to his importance among his contemporaries. On the 



188 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME [chap. 

other hand, the great world of Germany and its conditions 
must have given the young man many and strange revela- 
tions. Nowhere were the prelates so great and powerful, 
nowhere was there so little distinction between the Church 
and the world. Many of the clergy were married, and left, 
sometimes their cures, often a fortune amassed by fees for 
spiritual offices, to their sons : and benefices were bought 
and sold like houses and lands, with as little disguise. A 
youth brought up in Eome would not be easily astonished 
by the lawlessness of the nobles and subject princes of the 
empire, but the importance of a central authority strong 
enough to restrain and influence so vast a sphere, and so 
many conflicting powers, must have impressed upon him 
still more forcibly the supreme ideal of a spiritual rule more 
powerful still, which should control the nations as a great 
Emperor controlled the electors who were all but kings. 
And we know that it was now that he was first moved to 
that great indignation, which never died in his mind, against 
simony and clerical license, which were universally toler- 
ated, if not acknowledged as the ordinary rule of the age. 
It was high time that some reformer should arise. 

It was not, however, till the year 1046, on the occasion 
of the deposition of Gregory VI. for simony, that Hilde- 
brand first came into the full light of day. Curiously 
enough, the first introduction of this great reformer of the 
Church, the sworn enemy of everything simoniacal, was 
in the suite of this Pope deposed for that sin. But in all 
probability the simony of Gregory VI. was an innocent 
error, and resulted rather from a want of perception than 
evil intention, of which evidently there was none in his 
mind. He made up to the rivals who held Eome in fee, 
for the dues and tributes and offerings which were all they 
cared for, by the sacrifice of his own fortune. If he had 
not profited by it himself, if some one else had been elected 
Pope, no stain would have been left upon his name : and he 



ii.] THE MOXK HILDEBRAXD. 189 

seems to have laid down his dignities without a murmur : 
but his heart was broken by the shame and bitter convic- 
tion that what he had meant for good was in reality the 
very evil he most condemned. Henry proceeded on his 
march to Eome after deposing the Pope, apparently taking 
Gregory with him : and there without any protest from the 
silenced and terrified people, nominated a German bishop 
of his own to the papal dignity, from whose hands he 
himself afterwards received the imperial crown. He then 
returned to Germany, sweeping along with him the deposed 
and the newly-elected Popes, the former attended in si- 
lence and sorrow by Hildebrand, who never lost faith in 
him, and to the end of his life spoke of him as his master. 

A stranger journey could scarcely have been. The trium- 
phant German priests and prelates surrounding the new 
head of the Church, and the handful of crestfallen Italians 
following the fallen fortunes of the other, must have made 
a strange and not very peaceful conjunction. "Hildebrand 
desired to show reverence to his lord," says one of the 
chronicles. Thus his career began in the deepest mortifi- 
cation and humiliation, the forced subjection of the Church 
which it was his highest aim and hope to see triumphant, 
to the absolute force of the empire and the powers of this 
world. 

Pope Gregory reached his place of exile on the banks of 
the Ehine, with his melancholy train, in deep humility ; 
but that exile was not destined to be long. He died there 
within a few months : and his successor soon followed him 
to the grave. For a short and disastrous period Eome 
seems to have been left out of the calculations altogether, 
and the Emperor named another German bishop, whom he 
sent to Eome under charge of the Marquis, or Margrave, 
or Duke of Tuscany — for he is called by all these titles. 
This Pope, however, was still more short-lived, and died in 
three weeks after his proclamation, by poison it was sup- 



190 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

posed. It is not to be wondered at if the bishops of Ger- 
many began to be frightened of this magnificent nomina- 
tion. Whether it was the judgment of God which was 
most to be feared, or the poison of the subtle and schem- 
ing Romans, the prospect was not encouraging. The third 
choice of Henry fell upon Bruno, the bishop of Toul, a rela- 
tive of his own, and a saintly person of commanding pres- 
ence and noble manners. Bruno, as was natural, shrank 
from the office, but after days of prayer and fasting yielded, 
and was presented to the ambassadors from Rome as their 
new Pope. Thus the head of the Church was for the third 
time appointed by the Emperor, and the ancient privilege 
of his election by the Roman clergy and people swept 
away. 

But Henry was not now to meet with complete submis- 
sion and compliance, as he had done before. The young 
Hildebrand had shown no rebellious feeling when his master 
was set aside : he must have, like Gregory, felt the decision 
to be just. And after faithful service till the death of the 
exile, he had retired to Cluny, to his convent, pondering 
many things. We are not told what it was that brought 
him back to Germany at this crisis of affairs, whether he 
were sent to watch the proceedings, or upon some humbler 
mission, or by the mere restlessness of an able young man 
thirsting to be employed, and the instinct of knowing when 
and where he was wanted. He reappeared, however, sud- 
denly at the imperial court during these proceedings ; and 
no doubt watched the summary appointment of the new 
Pope with indignation, injured in his patriotism and in his 
churchmanship alike, by an election in which Rome had no 
hand, though otherwise not dissatisfied with the Teutonic 
bishop, who was renowned both for piety and learning. 
The chronicler pauses to describe Hildebrand in this his 
sudden reintroduction to the great world. "He was a 
youth of noble disposition, clear mind, and a holy monk, " 



ii.] THE MONK HILDEBRAND. 191 

we are told. It was while Bishop Bruno was still full of 
perplexities and doubts that this unexpected counsellor 
appeared, a man, though young, already well known, who 
had been trained in Borne, and was an authority upon the 
customs and precedents of the Holy See. He had been 
one of the closest attendants upon a Pope, ana knew every- 
thing about that high office — there could be no better 
adviser. The anxious bishop sent for the young monk, and 
Hildebrand so impressed him with his clear mind and high 
conception of the papal duties, that Bruno begged him to 
accompany him to Borne. 

He answered boldly, "I cannot go with you." ''Why?" 
said the Teuton prelate with amazement. " Because with- 
out canonical institution," said the daring monk, " by the 
sole power of the emperor, you are about to seize the Church 
of Borne." 

Bruno was greatly startled by this bold speech. It is 
possible that he, in his distant provincial bishopric, had no 
very clear knowledge of the canonical modes of appointing 
a Pope. There were many conferences between the monk 
and the Pope-elect, the young man who was not born to 
hesitate but saw clear before him what to do, and his elder 
and superior, who was neither so well informed nor so 
gifted. Bruno, however, if less able and resolute, must 
have been a man of a generous and candid mind, anxious to 
do his duty, and ready to accept instruction as to the best 
method of doing so, which was at the same time the noblest 
way of getting over his difficulties. He appeared before 
the great diet or council assembled in Worms, and announced 
his acceptance of the pontificate, but only if he were elected 
to it according to their ancient privileges by the clergy and 
people of Borne. It does not appear whether there was any 
resistance to this condition, but it cannot have been of a 
serious character, for shortly after, having taken farewell 
of his own episcopate and chapter, he set out for Borne. 



192 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

This is the account of the incident given by Hildebrand 
himself when he was the great Pope Gregory, towards the 
end of his career. It was his habit to tell his attendants 
the story of his life in all its varied scenes, during the 
troubled leisure of its end, as old men so often love to do. 
" Part I myself heard, and part of it was reported to me by 
many others," says one of the chroniclers. There is another 
account which has no such absolute authority, but is not 
unreasonable or unlikely, of the same episode, in which we 
are told that Bishop Bruno on his way to Eome turned aside 
to visit Cluny, of which Hildebrand was prior, and that 
the monk boldly assailed the Pope, upbraiding him with 
having accepted from the hand of a layman so great an 
office, and thus violently intruded into the government of 
the Church. In any case Hildebrand was the chief actor 
and inspirer of a course of conduct on the part of Bruno 
which was at once pious and politic. The papal robes which 
he had assumed at Worms on his first appointment were 
taken off, the humble dress of a pilgrim assumed, and with 
a reduced retinue and in modest guise the Pope-elect took 
his way to Borne. His episcopal council acquiesced in this 
change of demeanour, says another chronicler, which shows 
how general an impression Hildebrand's eloquence and the 
fervour of his convictions must have made. It was a slow 
journey across the mountains lasting nearly two months, 
with many lingerings on the way at hospitable monasteries, 
and towns where the Emperor's cousin could not but be a 
welcome guest. Hildebrand, who must have felt the great 
responsibility of the act which he had counselled, sent letter 
after letter, whenever they paused on their way, to Borne, 
describing, no doubt with all the skill at his command, how 
different was this German bishop from the others, bow 
scrupulous he was that his election should be made freely if 
at all, in what humility he, a personage of so high a rank, 
and so many endowments, was approaching Borne, and how 



n.] THE MONK HILDEBRAND. 193 

important it was that a proper reception should be given to 
a candidate so good, so learned, and so fit in every way 
for the papal throne. Meanwhile Bishop Bruno, anxious 
chiefly to conduct himself worthily, and to prepare for 
his great charge, beguiled the way with prayers and pious 
meditations, not without a certain timidity as it would 
appear about his reception. But this timidity turned out 
to be quite uncalled for. His humble aspect, joined to his 
high prestige as the kinsman of the emperor, and the anx- 
ious letters of Hildebrand had prepared everything for 
Bruno's reception. The population came out on all sides 
to greet his passage. Some of the Germans were perhaps 
a little indignant with this unnecessary humility, but the 
keen Benedictine pervaded and directed everything while 
the new Pope, as was befitting on the eve of assuming so 
great a responsibility, was absorbed in holy thought and 
prayer. The party had to wait on the further bank of the 
Tiber, which was in flood, for some days, a moment of 
anxious suspense in which the pilgrims watched the walls 
and towers of the great city in which lay their fate with 
impatience and not without alarm. But as soon as the 
water fell, which it did with miraculous rapidity, the whole 
town, with the clergy at its head, came out to meet the 
new-comers, and Leo IX., one of the finest names in the 
papal lists, entering barefooted and in all humility by 
the great doors of St. Peter's, was at once elected unani- 
mously, and received the genuine homage of all Pome. One 
can imagine with what high satisfaction, yet with eyes ever 
turned to the future, content with no present achievement, 
Hildebrand must have watched the complete success of his 
plan. 

This event took place, Villemain tells us (the early 
chroniclers, as has been said, are most sparing of dates), in 
1046, a year full of events. Muratori in his annals gives it 
as two years later. Hildebrand could not yet have attained 



194 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

his thirtieth year in either case. He was so high in favour 
with the new Pope, to whom he had been so wise a guide, 
that he was appointed at once to the office of Economico, a 
sort of Chancellor of the Exchequer to the Court of Rome, 
and at the same time was created Cardinal-archdeacon, and 
abbot of St. Paul's, the great monastery outside the walls. 
Platina tells us that he received this charge as if the Pope 
had " divided with him the care of the keys, the one ruling 
the church of St. Peter and the other that of St. Paul." 

That great church, though but a modern building now, 
after the fire which destroyed it seventy years ago, and 
standing on the edge of the desolate Campagna, is still a 
shrine universally visited. The Campagna was not desolate 
in Hildebrand's days, and the church was of the highest 
distinction, not only as built upon the spot of St. Paul's 
martyrdom, but for its own splendour and beauty. It is 
imposing still, though so modern, and with so few relics 
of the past. But the pilgrim of to-day, who may perhaps 
recollect that over its threshold Marcella dragged herself, 
already half dead, into that peace of God which the sanct- 
uary afforded amid the sack and the tortures of Rome, 
may add another association if he is so minded in the 
thought of the great ecclesiastic who ruled here for many 
years, arriving, full of zeal and eager desire for universal 
reform, into the midst of an idle crew of depraved monks, 
who had allowed their noble church to fall into the state 
of a stable, while they themselves — a mysterious and 
awful description, yet not perhaps so alarming to us as to 
them — "were served in the refectory by women," the first 
and perhaps the only, instance of female servants in a 
monastery. Hildebrand made short work of these minis- 
trants. He had a dream — which no doubt would have 
much effect on the monks, always overawed by spiritual 
intervention, however material they might be in mind or 
habits — in which St. Paul appeared to him, working hard 



ii.] THE MONK HILDEBRAND. 1D5 

to clear out and purify his desecrated church. The young 
abbot immediately set about the work indicated by the 
Apostle, "eliminating all uncleanness," says his chronicler: 
" and supplying a sufficient amount of temperate food, he 
gathered round him a multitude of honest monks faithful 
to their rule." 

Hildebrand's great business powers, as we should say, 
enabled him very soon to put the affairs of the convent 
in order. The position of the monastery outside the city 
gates and defences, and its thoroughly disordered condition, 
had left it open to all the raids and attacks of neighbouring 
nobles, who had found the corrupt and undisciplined monks 
an easy prey ; but they soon discovered that they had in the 
new abbot a very different antagonist. In these occupa- 
tions Hildebrand passed several years, establishing his 
monastery on the strongest foundations of discipline, purity, 
and faith. Reform was what the Church demanded in 
almost every detail of its' work. Amid the agitation and 
constant disturbance outside, it had not been possible to 
keep order within, nor was an abbot who had bought his 
post likely to attempt it: and a great proportion of the 
abbots, bishops, and great functionaries of the Church had 
bought their posts. In the previous generation it had been 
the rule. It had become natural, and disturbed apparently 
no man's conscience. A conviction, however, had evidently 
arisen in the Church, working by what influences we know 
not, but springing into flame by the action of Hildebrand, 
and by his Pope Leo, that this state of affairs was mon- 
strous and must come to an end. The same awakening has 
taken place again and again in the Church as the necessity 
has unfortunately arisen : and never had it been more neces- 
sary than now. Every kind of immorality had been con- 
cealed under the austere folds of the monk's robe; the 
parish priests, especially in Germany, lived with their wives 
in a calm contempt of all the Church's laws in that respect. 



196 THE MAKERS OF MODERN" ROME. [chap. 

This, which to us seems the least of their offences, was not 
so in the eyes of the new race of Church reformers. They 
thought it worse than ordinary immoral relations, as coun- 
terfeiting and claiming the title of a lawful union; and to 
the remedy of this great declension from the rule of the 
Church, and of the still greater scandal of simony, the new 
Pope's utmost energies were now directed. 

A very remarkable raid of reformation, which really 
seems the most appropriate term which could be used, took 
place accordingly in the first year of Leo IX. 's reign. We 
do not find Hildebrand mentioned as accompanying him in 
his travels — probably he was already too deeply occupied 
with the cleansing out of St. Paul's physically and morally, 
to leave Rome, of which, besides, he had the care, in all its 
external as well as spiritual interests, during the Pope's 
absence : but no doubt he was the chief inspiration of the 
scheme, and had helped to organise all its details. Some- 
thing even of the subtle snare in which his own patron 
Gregory had been caught was in the plan with which'Hilde- 
brand, thus gleaning wisdom from suffering, sent forth his 
Pope. After holding various smaller councils in Italy, Leo 
crossed the mountains to France, where against the wish of 
the Emperor, he held a great assembly at Eheims. The 
nominal occasion of the visit was the consecration of that 
church of St. Eemy, then newly built, which is still one of 
the glories of a city so rich in architectural wealth. The 
body of St. Eemy was carried, with many wonderful pro- 
cessions, from the monastery where it lay, going round and 
round the walls of the mediaeval town and through its 
streets with chants and psalms, with banner and cross, 
until at last it was deposited solemnly on an altar in the 
new building, now so old and venerable. Half of Prance 
had poured into Eheims for this great festival, and followed 
the steps of the Pope and hampered his progress — for he 
was again and again unable to proceed from the great 



II.] 



THE MONK HILDEBRAND. 



197 



throngs that blocked every street. This, however, though 
a splendid ceremony, and one which evidently made much 
impression on the multitude, was but the preliminary chap- 
ter. After the consecration came a wholly unexpected visi- 
tation, the council of Eheims, which was not concerned 
like most other councils with questions of doctrine, but 
of justice and discipline. The throne for the Pope was 
erected in the middle of the nave of the cathedral — not, 




PYRAMID OF CAIUS CESTIUS. 



it need scarcely be said, the late but splendid cathedral 
now existing — and surrounded in a circle by the seats of 
the bishops and archbishops. When all were assembled 
the object of the council was stated — the abolition of 
simony, and of the usurpation of the priesthood and the 
altar by laymen, and the various immoral practices which 
had crept into the shadow of the Church and been tolerated 
or authorised there. The Pope in his opening address 
adjured his assembled counsellors to help him to root out 
those tares which choked the divine grain, and implored 



198 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

them, if any among them had been guilty of the sin of - 
simony, either by sale or purchase of benefices, that he 
should make a public confession of his sin. 

Terrible moment for the bishops and other prelates, im- 
mersed in all the affairs of their times and no better than 
other men ! The reader after all these centuries can scarcely 
fail to feel the thrill of alarm, or shame, or abject terror 
that must have run through that awful sitting as men 
looked into each other's faces and grew pale. The arch- 
bishop of Treves got up first and declared his hands to be 
clean, so did the archbishop of Lyons and Besancon. Well 
for them ! But he of Bheims in his own cathedral, he who 
must have been in the front of everything for these few 
triumphant days of festival, faltered when his turn came. 
He begged that the discussion might be adjourned till next 
day, and that he might be allowed to see the Pope in pri- 
vate before making his explanations. It must have been 
with a kind of grim benignancy, and awful toleration, that 
the delay was granted and the inquisition went on, while 
that great personage, one of the first magnates of the 
assembly, sat silent, pondering all there was against him 
and how little he had to say in his defence. The council 
became more lively after this with accusations and counter- 
accusations. The bishop of Langres procured the deposi- 
tion of an abbot in his diocese for immoral conduct; but 
next day was assailed himself of simony, adultery, and the 
application of torture in order to extort money. After a 
day or two of discussion this prelate fled, and was finally 
excommunicated. Pope Leo was not a man to be trifled 
with. And so the long line of prelates was gone through 
with many disastrous consequences as the days ran on. 

It is less satisfactory to find him easily excommunicating 
rebels and opponents of the Emperor, whose arms were too 
successful or their antagonism too important. Even the 
best of priests and Popes err sometimes — and to have such 



ii.] THE MONK HILDEBRAND. 199 

a weapon as excommunication at hand like a thunderbolt 
must have been very tempting. Leo at the same time 
excommunicated also the people of Benevento, who had 
rebelled against the Emperor, and the archbishop of 
Bavenna, who was in rebellion against himself. 

The travels and activity of this Pope on his round of 
examination and punishment were extraordinary. He ap- 
pears in one part of Italy after another : in the far south, 
in the midland plains, holding councils everywhere, depos- 
ing bishops, scourging the Church clean. Again he is over 
the hills in his own country, meeting the Emperor, as active 
as himself, and almost as earnest in his desire to cleanse 
the Church of simony — moving here and there, performing 
all kinds of sacred functions from the celebration of a feast 
to the excommunication of a city. His last, and as it 
proved fatal enterprise was an expedition against the Nor- 
mans, who had got possession of a great part of Southern 
Italy, and against whom the Pope went, most inappropri- 
ately, at the head of an army, made up of the most hetero- 
geneous elements, and which collapsed in face of the enemy. 
Leo himself either was made prisoner or took refuge in the 
town of Benevento, which had recently, by a bargain with 
the Emperor, become the property of the Holy See. Here 
he was detained for nearly a year, more or less voluntarily, 
and when, at length, he set out for Borne, with a strong 
escort of the Normans and every mark of honour, it was 
with broken health and failing strength. He died shortly 
after reaching his destination, in his own great church, 
having caused himself to be carried there as he grew worse ; 
and nothing could be more imposing than the scene of his 
death, in St. Peter's, which was all hung with black and 
illuminated with thousands of funeral lights for this great 
and solemn event. All Borne witnessed his last hours and 
saw him die. He was one of the great Popes, though he 
did not fully succeed even in his own appropriate work of 



200 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

Church reform, and failed altogether when he took, unfort- 
unately, sword in hand. Not a word, however, could be 
said against the purity of his life and motives, and these 
were universally acknowledged, especially among the Nor- 
mans against whom he led his unfortunate army, and 
who worshipped, while probably holding captive, their rash 
invader. 

During the eight years of Leo's popedom Hildebrand 
had been at the head of affairs in Rome, where erring 
priests and simoniacal bishops had been not less severely 
brought to book than in other places. He does not seem 
to have accompanied the Pope on any of his many expedi- 
tions ; but with the aid of a new brother-in-arms, scarcely 
less powerful and able than himself, Peter Damian, then 
abbot of Eontavellona and afterwards bishop of Ostia, did 
his best under Leo to sweep clean the ecclesiastical world 
in general as he had swept clean his own church of St. Paul. 
When Leo died, Hildebrand was one of the three legates 
sent to consult the Emperor as to the choice of another 
Pope. This was a long and difficult business, since the 
susceptibilities of the Romans, anxious to preserve their 
own real or apparent privilege of election, had to be recon- 
ciled with the claims of Henry, who had no idea of yielding 
them in any way, and who had the power on his side. The 
selection seems to have been finally made by Hildebrand 
rather than Henry, and was that of Gebehard, bishop of 
Aichstadt, another wealthy German prelate, also related to 
the Emperor. Why he should have consented to accept this 
mission, however, he who had so strongly declined to follow 
Leo as the nominee of the Emperor, and made it a condition 
of his service that the new Pope should go humbly to Eome 
as a pilgrim to be elected there, is unexplained by any of 
the historians. 

It was in the spring of 1055 that after long delays and 
much waiting, the Roman conclave came back, bringing 



ii.] THE MONK HILDEBRAND. 201 

their Pope with them. But Victor II. was like so many of 
his German predecessors, short-lived. His reign only lasted 
two years, the half of which he seems to have spent in Ger- 
many. " He was not one who loved the monks, " and prob- 
ably Hildebrand found that he would do but little with 
one whose heart would seem to have remained on the other 
side of i monti — as the Alps are continually called. No 
second ambassador was sent to the Imperial Court for a 
successor : for in the fateful year 1056 the Emperor also 
died, preceding Victor to the grave by a few months. With- 
out pausing to consult the German Court, with a haste 
which proves their great anxiety to reassert themselves, 
the Roman clergy and people elected Frederick, abbot of 
Monte Cassino and brother of the existing prince of Tus- 
cany — Gottfried of Lorraine, the second husband of Bea- 
trice of Tuscany and step-father of Matilda the actual heir 
to that powerful duchy. Perhaps a certain desire to cling 
to the only power in Italy which could at all protect them 
against an irritated Imperial Court mingled with this 
choice: but it was a perfectly natural and worthy one. 
Frederick, unfortunately, lived but a few months, disap- 
pointing many hopes. He had sent Hildebrand to the 
Imperial Court to explain and justify his election, but when 
he found his health beginning to give way, a sort of panic 
seems to have seized him, and collecting round him all the 
representatives of priests and people who could be gath- 
ered together, he made them swear on pain of excommuni- 
cation to elect no successor until the return of Hildebrand. 
He died at Florence shortly after. 

There is something monotonous in these brief records : a 
great turmoil almost reaching the length of a convulsion for 
the choice, and then a short and agitated span, a year or 
two, sometimes only a month or two, and all is over and 
the new Pope goes to rejoin the long line of his predeces- 
sors. It was not, either, that these were old men, such as 



202 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

have so often been chosen in later days, venerable fathers 
of the Church whose age brought them nearer to the grave 
than the throne : — they were all men in the flower of their 
age, likely according to all human probability to live long. 
It was not wonderful if the German bishops were afraid of 
that dangerous elevation which seemed to carry with it an 
unfailing fate. 

Hildebrand was at the German Court when this sad news 
reached him. He was in the position, fascinating to most 
men — and he was not superior to others in this respect — 
of confidant and counsellor to a princess in the interesting 
position of a young widow, with a child, upon whose head 
future empire had already thrown its shadow. The posi- 
tion of the Empress Agnes was, no doubt, one of the most 
difficult which a woman could be called on to occupy, sur- 
rounded by powerful princes scarcely to be kept in subjec- 
tion by the Emperor, who was so little more than their 
equal, though their sovereign — and altogether indisposed 
to accept the supremacy of a woman. There is nothing in 
which women have done so well in the world as in the great 
art of government, but the Empress Agnes was not one of 
that kind. She had to fall back upon the support of the 
clergy in the midst of the rude circle of potentates with 
whom she had to contend, and the visit of Hildebrand with 
his lofty views, his great hopes, his impetuous determina- 
tion to vanquish evil with good, though not perhaps in the 
way recommended by the Apostles, was no doubt a wonder- 
ful refreshment and interest to her in the midst of all her 
struggles. But it was like a thunderbolt bursting at their 
feet to hear of the death of Frederick — (among the Popes 
Stephen IX.) : and the swiftly following outburst in Rome 
when, in a moment, in the absence of any spirit strong 
enough to control them, the old methods were put into 
operation, and certain of the Roman nobles ever ready to 
take advantage of an opportunity — with such supporters 



ii.] THE MONK HILDEBRAND. 203 

within the city as terror orbribes could secure them, taking 
the people by surprise — procured the hurried election of a 
Pope without any qualifications for the office. Nothing 
could.be more dramatic than the entire episode. A young 
Count of Tusculum, a stronghold seated amid the ruins of 
the old Roman city, above Frascati, one of a family who 
then seem to have occupied the position afterwards held by 
the Orsinis and Colonnas, was the leader of this conspiracy 
and the candidate was a certain Mincio, Bishop of Velletri, 
a member of the same family. The description in Mura- 
tori's Annals though brief is very characteristic. 

" Gregorio, son of Albanio Count Tusculano, of Frascati, along with 
some other powerful Romans, having gained by bribes a good part of 
the clergy and people, rushed by night, with a party of armed followers, 
into the Church of St. Peter, and there, with much tumult, elected 
Pope, Giovanni, Bishop of Velletri, afterwards called Mincio (a word 
perhaps drawn from the French Mince and which probably was the 
original of the phrase now used Minciono, Minchione), who assumed 
the name of Benedict X. He was a man entirely devoid of letters." 

The sudden raid in the night, all Rome silent and asleep, 
except the disturbed and hastily awakened streets by which 
the party had entered from across the Campagna and their 
robber fortress among the ruins of the classic Tusculum, 
makes a most curious and dramatic picture. The conspira- 
tors had among them certain so-called representatives of 
the people, with a few abbots who felt their seats insecure 
under a reforming Pope, and a few priests very desirous of 
shutting out all new and disturbing authority. They gath- 
ered hastily in the church which suddenly shone out into 
the darkness with flare of torch and twinkle of taper, while 
the intruder, Mincio, a lean and fantastic bishop, with affec- 
tations of pose and attitude such as his nickname implies, 
was hurried to the altar by his rude patrons and attend- 
ants. He was consecrated by the terrified archpriest of 
Ostia, upon whom the Frascati party had somewhere laid 
violent hands, and who faltered through the office half stu- 



204 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

pefied by fear. It was the privilege of the Bishop of Ostia 
to be the officiating prelate at the great solemnity of a 
Pope's consecration. When he could not be had the care- 
less and profane barons no doubt thought his subordinate 
would do very well instead. 

The news was received, however, though with horror, 
yet with a dignified self-restraint by the Imperial Court. 
Hildebrand set out at once for Florence to consult with the 
Sovereigns there, a royal family of great importance in the 
history of Italy, consisting of the widowed duchess Bea- 
trice, her second husband Gottfried of Lorraine, and her 
young daughter Matilda, the actual heiress of the princi- 
pality, all staunch supporters of the Church and friends of 
Hildebrand. That he should take the command of affairs 
at this sudden crisis seems to have been taken for granted 
on all sides. A council of many bishops "both German 
and Italian" was called together in Sienna, where it was 
met by a deputation from Rome, begging that fit steps 
might be taken to meet the emergency, and a legitimate 
Pope elected. The choice of this Council fell upon the 
Bishop of Florence, " who for wisdom and a good life was 
worthy of such a sublime dignity ; " and the new Pope was 
escorted to Rome by a strong band of Tuscan soldiers pow- 
erful enough to put down all tumult or rebellion in the city. 
The expedition paused at Sutri, a little town, just within 
the bounds of the papal possessions, which had already on 
that account been the] scene of the confusing and painful 
council which dethroned Gregory VI. to destroy the strong- 
holds of the Counts of Tusculum near that spot, and make 
an end of their power. Mincio, however, poor fantastic 
shadow, had no heart to confront a duly elected Pope, or 
the keen eye of Hildebrand, and abdicated at once his ill- 
gotten power. His vague figure so sarcastically indicated 
has a certain half -comic, half-rueful effect, appearing amid 
all these more important forms and things, first in the 



ii.] THE MONK HILDEBRAND. 205 

dazzle of the midnight office, and afterwards in a hazy twi- 
light of obscurity, stealing off, to be seen no more, except 
by the keen country folk and townsmen of his remote 
bishopric who, burlando — jesting as one is glad to hear 
they were able to do amid all their tumults and troubles — 
gave him his nickname, and thus sent down to posterity 
the fantastic vision of the momentary Pope with his minc- 
ing ways — no bad anti-pope though as Benedict X. he 
holds a faint footing in the papal roll — but a historical 
burla, a mediaeval joke, not without its power to relieve the 
grave chronicle of the time. 

The tumultuous public of Rome, which did not care very 
much either way, yet felt this election of the Pope to be 
its one remaining claim to importance, murmured and 
grumbled its best about the interference of Tuscany, a 
neighbour more insulting, when taking upon herself airs 
of mastery, than a distant and vaguely magnificent Em- 
peror; and there was an outcry against Hildebrand, who 
had erected "a new idol " in concert with Beatrice and with- 
out the consent of the Romans. But it was in reality Hil- 
debrand himself who now came to reign under the shadow 
of another insignificant and short-lived Pope. Nicolas 
II. and Alexander II. who followed were but the formal 
possessors of power; the true sway was henceforth in the 
hands of the ever-watchful monk, Cardinal-archdeacon, 
deputy and representative of the Holy See. It is one of 
the few instances to be found in the records of the world 
of that elevation of the man who can — so strongly preached 
by Carlyle — to the position which is his natural right. 
While Hildebrand had been scouring the world, an advent- 
urous young monk, passing i monti recklessly as the young 
adventurer now crosses the Atlantic, more times than could 
be counted — while he was, with all the zeal of his first 
practical essay in reform, cleaning out his stable at St. 
Paul's, making his presence to be felt in the expenditure 



206 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

and revenues, of Rome — there had been, as we have seen, 
Pope after Pope in the seat of the Apostle, most of them 
worthy enough, one at least, Leo IX., heroic in effort and 
devotion — but none of them born to guide the Church 
through a great crisis. The hour and the man had now 
come. 

It was not long before the presence of a new and great 
legislator became clearly visible. One of the first acts of 
Hildebrand, acting under Nicolas, was to hold a council in 
Pome in 1059, at which many things of importance were 
decided. The reader will want no argument to prove that 
there was urgent need of an established and certain rule for 
the election of the Popes, a necessity constantly recurring 
and giving rise to a continual struggle. It had been the 
privilege of the Poman clergy and people; it had become 
a prerogative of the Emperors; it was exercised by both 
together, the one satisfying itself with a fictitious co-opera- 
tion and assent to what the other did, but neither contented, 
and every vacancy the cause of a bitter and often disgrace- 
ful struggle. The nominal election by the clergy and 
people was a rule impossible, and meant only the temporary 
triumph of the party which was strongest or wealthiest for 
the moment, and could best pay for the most sweet voices 
of the crowd, or best overawe and cow their opponents. 
On the other hand, the action of the secular power, the 
selection or at least nomination of a Pope — with armies 
behind, if necessary, to carry out his choice — by the 
Emperor across the Alps, was a transaction subject to those 
ordinary secular laws, which induce a superior in whatever 
region of affairs to choose the man who is likely to be most 
serviceable to himself and his interests — interests which 
were very different from those which are the objects of the 
Church. No man had seen the dangers and difficulties of 
this divided and inconsistent authority more than Hilde- 
brand, and his determination to establish a steadfast and 



II.] 



THE MONK HILDEBRAND. 



207 



final method for the choice and election of the first great 
official of the Church was both wise and reasonable. Per- 
haps it was not without thought of the expediency of break- 
ing away from all precedents, and thus preparing the way 




55 i a 













-rr-® 









rwrj 



WHt' 
I 



TRINITA DE MONTI. 



for a new method, that he had, apparently on his own 
authority, transferred in a manner, what we may call the 
patronage of the Holy See, to Tuscany. The moment was 
propitious for such a change, for there was no Emperor, 
the heir of Henry III. being still a child and his mother 
not powerful enough to interfere. 



208 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

The new law introduced by Hildebrand and passed by 
the council was much the same in its general regulations 
as that which still exists. There was no solemn myste- 
rious Conclave, and the details were more simple; but the 
rules of election were virtually the same. The Cardinal- 
bishops made their choice first, which they then submitted 
to the other Cardinals of lower rank. If both were agreed 
the name of the Pope-elect was submitted to the final judg- 
ment of the people, no doubt a mere formula. This, we 
believe, is nominally still the last step of the procedure. 
The name is submitted, i.e., announced to the eager crowd 
in St. Peter's who applaud, which is all that is required of 
them : and all is done. This decree was passed salvo debito 
Jwnore et reverentia delecti filii nostri Henrici, a condition 
skilfully guarded by the promise to award the same honour 
(that is, of having a voice in the election) to those of his 
successors to whom the Holy See shall have personally 
accorded the same right. It was thus the Holy See which 
honoured the Emperors by according them a privilege, not 
the Emperors who had any right to nominate, much less 
elect, to the Holy See. 

Other measures of great importance for the purification 
and internal discipline of the Church were made law by 
this council, which was held in April 1059, the year of the 
accession of Nicolas II. ; but none of such fundamental 
importance as this, or so bold in their claim of spiritual 
independence. Hildebrand must by this time have been in 
the very height of life, a man of forty or so, already matured 
by much experience and beginning to systematise and regu- 
late the dreams and plans of his youth. He must have 
known by this time fully what he wanted and what was, or 
at least ought to be, his mission in the world. It is very 
doubtful, however, we think, whether that mission appeared 
to him what it has appeared to all the historians since — a 
deep-laid and all-overwhelming plan for the establishment 




ARCH OF TITUS. 



To face page 208. 



ii.] THE MONK HILDEBRAND. 211 

of the Papacy on such a pinnacle as never crowned head 
had attained. His purposes as understood by himself were 
first the cleansing of the Church — the clearing out of all 
the fleshly filth which had accumulated in it, as in his own 
noble Basilica, rendering it useless, hiding its beauty: and 
second the destruction of that system of buying and selling 
which went on in the Holy Temple — worse than money- 
changing and selling of doves, the sale of the very altars to 
any unworthy person who could pay for them. These were 
his first and greatest purposes — to make the Church pure 
and to make her free, as perhaps she never has been, as 
perhaps, alas, she never will wholly be : but yet the highest 
aim for every true churchman to pursue. 

These purposes were elevated and enlarged in his mind 
by the noble and beautiful thought of thus preparing and 
developing the one great disinterested power in the world, 
with nothing to gain, which should arbitrate in every quar- 
rel, and adjust contending claims and bring peace on earth, 
instead of the clashing of swords ; the true work of the suc- 
cessor of Peter, Christ's Vicar in the world. This was not 
a dream of Hildebrand alone. Three hundred years later 
the great soul of Dante still dreamt of that Papa Angelico, 
the hope of ages, who might one day arise and set all things 
right. Hildebrand was not of the Angelical type. He was 
not that high priest made of benign charity, and love for all 
men — of whom the mediaeval sages mused. But who will 
say that his dream, too, was not of the noblest or his ideal 
less magnanimous and great? Such an arbiter was wanted 
— what words could say how much? — in all those troubled 
and tumultuous kingdoms which were struggling against 
each other, overcoming and being overcome, always in dis- 
order, carrying out their human fate with a constant accom- 
paniment of human groans and sufferings and tears — one 
who would set all things right, who would judge the cause 
of the poor and friendless, who would have power to pull 



212 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

down a tyrant and erect with blessing and honour a new 
throne of justice in his dishonoured place. Have we less 
need of a Papa Angelico now? But unfortunately, 1 we 
have lost faith in the possibility of him, which is a fate 
which befalls so many high ideals from age to age. 

Did Hildebrand, a proud man and strong, a man full of 
ambition, full of the consciousness of great powers — did 
he long to grasp the reins of the universe in his own hand? 
to drive the chariots of the sun, to direct everything, to 
rule everything, to be more than a king, and hold Emperors 
trembling before him? It is very possible: in every great 
spirit, until fully disenchanted, something of this desire 
must exist. But that it was not a plan of ambition only, 
but a great ideal which it seemed to him well worth a man's 
life to carry out, there can, we think, be no reasonable 
doubt. 

Thus he began his reign, in reality, though not by title, 
in Rome. The cloisters were cleansed and the integrity of 
the Church vindicated, though not by any permanent proc- 
ess, but one that had to be repeated again and again in 
every chapter of her history. The Popes were elected after 
a few stormy experiments in the manner he had decreed, 
and the liberty of election established and protected — even 
to some extent and by moments, his Papacy, that wonderful 
institution answered to bis ideal, and promised to fulfil his 
dream : until the time came common to all men, when hope 
became failure, and he had to face the dust and mire of 
purpose overthrown. But in the meantime no such thoughts 

1 It is touching and pathetic to divine, in the present Pope, some- 
thing of that visionary and disinterested ambition, that longing to 
bless and help the universe, which was in those dreams of the mediaeval 
mind, prompted by a great pity, and a love that is half divine. Leo 
XIII. is too wise a man to dream of temporal power restored, though 
he is a martyr to the theory of it : but there would seem to be in his 
old age which makes it impossible if nothing else did, a trembling con- 
sciousness of capacity to be in himself a Papa Angelico, and gather us 
all under his wings. 



n.] THE MONK HILDEBRAND. 213 

were in his mind as he laboured with all the exhilaration 
of capacity, and with immense zeal and pains, at his own 
affairs, which meant in those days to the Archdeacon of 
Rome the care of all the Churches. The letters of the Pope 
in Council which carried the addition of the name of that 
humblest of his sons and servants, Hildebrand, bore the 
commands of such a sovereign as Hildebrand dreamt of, 
to bishops and archbishops over all the world. Here is 
one of these epistles. 

Although several unfavourable reports have reached the Apostolic 
See in respect to your Fraternity which cannot be rejected without 
inquiry — as, for example, that you have favoured our enemies, and 
have neglected pontifical ordinances : yet as you have defended your- 
self from these accusations by the testimony of a witness of weight and 
have professed fidelity to St. Peter, we are disposed to pass over these 
reports and to hope that the testimony in your favour is true. There- 
fore take care in future so to live, that your enemies shall have no 
occasion to sadden us on your account. Exert yourself to fulfil the 
hopes which the Apostolical See has formed of you : reprimand, entreat 
and warn your glorious king that he may not be corrupted by the 
counsels of the wicked, who hope under cover of our own troubles to 
elude Apostolic condemnation. Let him take care how he resists the 
sacred canons, or rather St. Peter himself, thereby rousing our wrath 
against him, who rather desire to love him as the apple of our eye. 

These were high words to be said to a dubious, not well- 
assured archbishop, occupying a very high place in the 
Church and powerful for good or for evil : but Hildebrand 
did not mince matters, whatever he might have to say. 

Meanwhile the good Pope, Nicolas, went on with his 
charities while his Cardinal Archdeacon thundered in his 
name. He went, in the end of his life, with his court on 
a visit to the Normans, who had now, for some time — 
since they defeated Pope Leo before the gates of Benevento 
and came under the charm of papal influence, though in the 
person of their prisoner — become the most devout and 
generous servants of the Papacy: which indeed granted 
them titles to the sovereignty of any chance principality 
they might pick up — which was a good equivalent. When 



214 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

the troops of Guiscard escorted his Holiness back to Bome 
they were so obliging as to destroy a castle or two of those 
robber nobles who infested all the roads and robbed the 
pilgrims, and were, in the midst of all greater affairs, like 
a nest of venomous wasps about the ears of the Roman 
statesmen and legislators — -especially those of the ever 
turbulent family of Tusculum, the Counts of Frascati, who 
kept watch afar upon the northern gates and every pilgrim 
path. This Pope died soon after in 1061 in Florence, his 
former episcopal see, which he often revisited and loved. 

And now came the opportunity for Hildebrand to carry 
out his own bold law, and elect at once, by the now legal 
methods, a new head to the Church. But his coadjutors 
X^robably had not his own courage : and though bold enough 
under his inspiration to pass that law, hesitated to carry it 
out. It is said, too, that in Bome itself there was the 
strong opposition of a German party really attached to the 
imperial order, or convinced that without the strong back- 
ing of the empire the Church could not stand. Beluctantly 
Hildebrand consented to send a messenger to consult the 
imperial court, where strong remonstrances and appeals 
were at once presented by the Germans and Lombards who 
were as little desirous of having an Italian Pope over them 
as the Bomans were of a Teutonic one. The Empress 
Agnes had been alarmed probably by rumours in the air of 
her removal from the regency. She had been alienated 
from Hildebrand by the reports of his enemies, and no 
doubt made to believe that the rights of her son must suffer 
if any innovation was permitted. She forgot her usual 
piety in her panic, and would not so much as receive Hilde- 
brand' s messenger, who, alone of all the many deputations 
arriving on the same errand, was left five days (or seven) 
waiting at the gates of the Palace — "For seven days he 
waited in the antechamber of the king," says Muratori — 
while the others were admitted and listened to. This was 



ii.] THE MONK HILDEBRAND. 215 

too much for Hildebrand, to whom his envoy, Cardinal 
Stef ano, returned full of exasperation,- as was natural. The 
Cardinals with timidity, but sustained by Hilclebrand's high 
courage and determination, then proceeded to the election, 
which was duly confirmed by the people assembled in St. 
Peter's, and therefore perfectly legal according to the latest 
law. We are told much, however, of the excited state of 
Rome during the election, and of the dislike of the people 
to the horde of monks, many of them mendicant, and even 
more or less vagabond, who were let loose upon the city, 
electioneering agents of the most violent kind, filling the 
streets and churches with clamour. This wild army, obnox- 
ious to the citizens, was at Hildebrand's devotion, and 
prejudiced more than they promoted, his views among 
the crowd. 

"Here returned to the Romans," says Muratori, whose 
right to speak on such a subject will not be doubted, " com- 
plete freedom in the election of the Popes, with the addi- 
tion of not even awaiting the consent of the Emperors for 
their consecration; an independence ever maintained since, 
down to our own days." This daring act made a wonderful 
revolution in the politics of Rome : it was the first erection 
of her standard of independence. The Church had neither 
troops nor vassals upon whom she could rely, and to defy 
thus openly the forces of the Empire Was a tremendous 
step to take. Nor was it only from Germany that danger 
threatened. Lombardy and all the north of Italy was, 
with the exception of Tuscany, in arms against the auda- 
cious monk. Only those chivalrous savages of Normans, 
who, however, were as good soldiers as any Germans, could 
be calculated on as faithful to the Holy See : and Godfried 
of Tuscany stood between Rome and her enemies Jidelissimo, 
ready to ward off any blow. 

The election passed over quietly, and Alexander II. 
(Anselm the Bishop of Lucca) took his place, every par- 



216 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

ticular of his assumption of the new dignity being carefully- 
carried through as though in times of deepest peace. In 
Germany, however, the news produced a great sensation 
and tumult. A Diet was held at Bale, for the coronation 
in the first place of the young king Henry, now twelve 
years old — but still more for the immediate settlement of 
this unheard-of revolt. When that ceremonial was over 
the court proceeded to the choice of a Pope with a con- 
temptuous indifference to the proceedings in Borne. This 
anti-pope has no respect from history. He is said by one 
authority to have been chosen because his evil life made 
him safe against any such fury of reform as that which 
made careless prelate and priest fall under the rod of Hil- 
debrand on every side. Muratori, whose concise little sen- 
tences are always so refreshing after the redundancy of 
the monkish chronicles, is very contemptuous of this pre- 
tender, whose name was Cadalous or Cadulo, an undistin- 
guished and ill-sounding name. " The anti-pope Cadaloo or 
Cadalo occupied himself all the winter of this year " (says 
Muratori) " in collecting troops and money, in order to pro- 
ceed to Borne to drive out the legitimate successor of St. 
Peter and to have himself consecrated there. Some suppose 
that he had already been ordained Pope, and had assumed 
the name of Honorius II., but there is no proof of this. 
And if he did not change his name it is a sign that he had 
never been consecrated." Other authorities boldly give 
him the title of Honorius II. : but he is generally called 
the anti-pope Cadalous in history. 

A conflict immediately arose between the two parties. 
Cadalous, at the head of an army appeared before Borne, 
but not till after Hildebrand had placed his Pope, who was 
for the moment less strong than the Emperor's Pope, in 
Tuscany under the protection of Beatrice and her husband 
Godfried. Then followed a stormy time of marches and 
countermarches round and about the city, in which some- 



ii.] THE MONK HILDEBRAND. 217 

times the invaders were successful and sometimes the 
defenders. At length the Tuscans came to the rescue with 
the two Countesses in their midst who were always so faith- 
ful in their devotion to Hildebrand, Beatrice in the maturity 
of her beauty and influence, and the young Matilda, the 
real sovereign of the Tuscan states, fifteen years old, radiant 
in hope and enthusiasm and stirring up the spirits of the 
Florentines and Tuscan men at arms. Cadalous withdrew 
from that encounter making such terms as he could with 
Godfried, with many prayers and large presents, so that he 
was allowed to escape to Parma his bishopric, testa bassa. 
Yet the records are not very clear on these points, Mura- 
tori tells us. Doubts are thrown on the loyalty of Duke 
Godfried. He is said to have invited the Normans to come 
to the help of the Pope, and then invaded their territories, 
which was not a very knightly proceeding : but there is no 
appearance at this particular moment of the Normans, or 
any force but that of the Tuscan army with young Countess 
Matilda and her mother flashing light and courage into the 
ranks. 

The anti-pope, if he deserved that title, did not trouble 
the legitimate authorities long. He was suddenly dropped 
by the Germans in the excitement of a revolution, originat- 
ing in the theft of little Henry the boy-monarch, whom 
the Bishop of Cologne stole from his mother Agnes, as it 
became long afterwards a pleasant device of state to carry 
off from their mothers the young fatherless Jameses of 
Scots history. Young Henry was run away with in the 
same way, and Agnes humiliated and cast off by the Teu- 
tonic nobility, who forgot all about such a trifle as a Pope 
in the heat of their own affairs. It was only when this 
matter was settled that a council was held in Cologne by 
the archbishop who had been the chief agent in the abduc- 
tion of Henry, and was now first in power. Of this council 
there seems no authoritative record. It is only by the 



218 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

answer to its deliberations published by Peter Damian in 
which, as is natural, that able controversialist has an easy- 
victory over the other side — that anything is known of it. 
Whether Cadalous was formerly deposed by this council is 
not known: but he was dropped by the authorities of the 
Empire which had a similar result. 

Notwithstanding, this rash pretender made one other 
vain attempt to seize the papal throne, being encouraged 
by various partisans in Borne itself, by whose means he 
got possession of St. Peter's, where the unfortunate man 
remained for one troubled night, making such appeals to 
God and to his supporters as may be imagined, and furtively 
performing the various offices of the nocturnal service, per- 
haps not without a sense of profanation in the minds of 
those who had stolen into the great darkness and silence of 
the Basilica to meet him, with a political rather than a 
devotional intention. Next day all Rome heard the news, 
and rising seized its arms and drove his handful of defend- 
ers out of the city. Cadalous was taken by one of his 
supporters, Cencio or Vincencio " son of the prsefect " to St. 
Angelo, where he held out against the Romans for the space 
of two years, suffering many privations ; and thence escap- 
ing on pain of his life after other adventures, disappears 
into the darkness to be seen no more. 

This first distinct conflict between Rome and the Empire 
was the beginning of the long-continued struggle which tore 
Italy asunder for generations — the strife of the two parties 
called Guelfs and Ghibellines, the one for the Empire, the 
other for the Church, with all the ramifications of that 
great question. 

The year in which Cadalous first appeared in Rome, 
which was the year 1062, was also distinguished by a very 
different visitor. The Empress Agnes deprived of her son, 
shorn of her power, had nothing more to do among the 
subject princes who had turned against her. She deter- 



n.] THE MONK HILDEBRAND. 219 

mined, as dethroned monarchs are apt to do, to cast off the 
world which had -rejected her, and came to Rome, to beg 
pardon of the Pope and find a refuge for herself out of the 
noise and tumult. She had been in Rome once before, a 
young wife in all the pomp and pride of empire, conducted 
through its streets in the midst of a splendid procession, 
with her husband to be crowned. The strongest contrasts 
pleased the fancy of these days. She entered Eome the 
second time as a penitent in a black robe, and mounted 
upon the sorriest horse — " it was not to call a horse, but 
like a beast of burden, a donkey, no bigger than an ass." 
It is a curious sign of humiliation and accompanying eleva- 
tion of mind, but this is not the first time that we have 
heard of a pilgrim entering Rome on a miserable hack, as 
if that were the highest sign of humility. She was received 
with enthusiasm, notwithstanding her late actions of hos- 
tility, and soon the walls of many churches were radiant 
with the spoils of her imperial toilettes, brocades of gold 
and silver encrusted with jewels, and wonders of rich stuffs 
which even Peter Damian with his accomplished pen finds 
it difficult to describe. "She laid down everything, 
destroyed everything, in order to become, in her depriva- 
tion yet freedom, the bride of Christ." We are not told if 
Agnes entered a convent or only lived the life of a religious 
person in her own house; but she had the frequent company 
of Hildebrand and Peter Damian, and of the Bishop of 
Como, who seems to have been devoted to her service; and 
perhaps like other penitents was not so badly off in her 
humility, thus delivered out of all the tumults against 
which she had so vainly attempted to make head for years. 
While these smaller affairs — for even the anti-pope never 
seems to have been really dangerous to Rome notwith- 
standing his many efforts to disturb the peace of the Church 
— the world of Christendom which surrounded that one 
steady though constantly contested throne of the papacy, 



220 



THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 



was in commotion everywhere. It seems strange to speak 
in one breath of Hildebrand's great and- noble ideal of a 







Mi 



THE VILLA BORGHESE. 



throne always standing for righteousness, and of a sacred 
monarch supreme and high above all worldly motives, 
dispensing justice and peace: and in the next to confess 



ii.] THE MONK HILDEBRAND. 221 

his perfect acquiescence in, and indeed encouragement of, 
the undertaking of William the Conqueror, so manifest an 
act of tyranny and robbery, and interference with the rights 
of an independent nation, an undertaking only different 
from those of the brigands from Tusculum and other robber 
castles who swept the roads to Eome, by the fact of its 
much higher importance and its complete success. The 
Popes had sanctioned the raids of the Normans in Italy, 
and confirmed to them by legal title the possessions which 
they had taken by the strong hand : with perhaps a convic- 
tion that one strong rule was better than the perpetual 
bloodshed of the frays between the existing races — the 
duke here, the marquis there, all seeking their own, and 
no man thinking of his neighbour's or his people's advan- 
tage. But the internal discords of England were too far off 
to secure the observation of the Pope, and the mere fact 
of Harold's renunciation in favour of William, though it 
seems so specious a pretence to us, was to the eyes of the 
priests by far the most important incident in the matter, a 
vow taken at the altar and which therefore the servants of 
the altar were bound to see carried out. These two reasons 
however were precisely such as show the disadvantage of 
that grand papal ideal which was burning in Hildebrand's 
brain ; for a Pope, with a sacred authority to set up and 
pull down, should never be too far off to understand the 
full rights of any question were it in the remotest parts of 
the earth : and should be far above the possibility of having 
his judgment confused by a foregone ecclesiastical prejudice 
in favour of an unjust vow. 

Hildebrand however not only gave William, in his great 
stroke for a'n empire, the tremendous support of the Pope's 
authority but backed him up in many of his most high- 
handed and arbitrary proceedings against the Saxon prelates 
and rich abbeys which the Conqueror spoiled at his pleasure. 
It must not be forgotten, in respect to these latter spolia- 



222 THE MAKERS OF MODERN" ROME. [chap. 

tions, that the internal war which was raging in the Church 
all over the world, between the new race of reformers and 
the mass of ordinary clergy — who had committed many 
ecclesiastical crimes, who sometimes even had married and 
were comfortable in the enjoyment of a sluggish toleration, 
or formed connections that were winked at by a contemptu- 
ously sympathetic world ; or who had bought their benefices 
great and small, through an entangled system of gifts, 
graces, and indulgences, as well as by the boldest simony 
— made every kind of revolution within the Church pos- 
sible, and produced endless depositions and substitutions 
on every side. When, as we have seen, the bishop of a 
great continental see in the centre of civilisation could be 
turned out remorselessly from his bishopric on conviction 
of any of these common crimes and forced into the Cloister 
to amend his ways and end his life, it is scarcely likely 
that more consideration would be shown for an unknown 
prelate far away across the Northern seas, though it would 
seem to be insubordination rather than any ecclesiastical 
vice with which the Saxon clergy were chiefly charged. 
This first instance however of the papal right to sanction 
revolution, and substitute one claimant for another as the 
selection of Heaven, is perhaps the strongest proof that 
could be found of the impossibility of that ideal, and of the 
tribunal thus set up over human thrones and human rights. 
The papal see was thus drawn in to approve and uphold 
one of the most bloody invasions and one of the most cruel 
conquests ever known — and did so with a confidence and 
certainty, in an ignorance, and with a bias, which makes 
an end of all those lofty pretensions to perfect impartiality 
and a judgment beyond all influences of passion which 
alone could justify its existence. 

A great change had come over the firmament since the 
days when Leo IX. cleansed the Church at Eheims, and 
held that wonderful Council which set down so many of the 



ii.] THE MONK HILDEBRAND. 223 

mighty from their seats. Henry III., the enemy of simony, 
was dead, and the world had changed. As we shall often 
have occasion to remark, the papal rule of justice and purity 
was strong and succeeded — so long as the forces of the 
secular powers agreed with it. But when, as time went on, 
the Church found itself in conflict with these secular powers, 
a very different state of affairs ensued. 

The action of Eome in opposition to the young Henry 
IV., was as legitimate as had been its general agreement 
with, and approval of, his predecessor. The youth of this 
monarch had developed into ways very different from those 
of his father, and under his long minority all the evils 
which Henry III. had honestly set his face against, reap- 
peared in full force. Whether it was his removal from the 
natural and at least pure government of his mother, or from 
his native disposition which no authority or training had a 
chance in such circumstances of repressing, the young Henry 
grew up dissolute and vicious, and his court was the centre 
of a wild and disorganised society. Married at twenty, it 
was not very long before he tried by the most disreputable 
means to get rid of his young wife, and failing in that, 
called, or procured to be called by a complaisant arch- 
bishop, a council, in order to rid him of her. Rome lost 
no time in sending off to this council as legate, Peter 
Damian whose gift of speech was so unquestionable that 
he could even on occasion make the worse appear the better 
cause. But his cause in the present case was excellent, 
and his eloquence no less so, and he had all that was pru- 
dent as well as all that was wise and good in Germany on 
his side, notwithstanding the complaisance of the priests. 
The legate remonstrated, exhorted, threatened. The thing 
Henry desired was a thing unworthy of a Christian, it was 
a fatal example to the world; finally no power on earth 
would induce the Pope, whose hands alone could confer 
that consecration, to crown as Roman Emperor a man who 



224 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

had sinned so flagrantly against the laws of God. The 
great German nobles added practical arguments not less 
urgent in their way; and Henry surrounded on all sides 
with warnings was forced to give way. But this downfall 
for the moment had little effect on the behaviour of the 
young potentate, and his vices were such that his immediate 
vassals in his own country were on the point of universal 
rebellion, no man's castle or goods or wife or daughter 
being safe. The Church, which his father had given so 
much care and pains to cleanse and purify, sank again into 
the rankest simony, every stall in a cathedral, and cure in 
a bishopric selling like articles of merchandise. It was 
time in the natural course of affairs when the young mon- 
arch attained the full age of manhood that he should be 
promoted to the final dignity of emperor, and consecrated 
as such — a rite which only the Pope could perforin : and 
no doubt it was with a full consciousness of the power thus 
resting with the Holy See, as Avell as in consequence of 
numerous informal but eager appeals to the Pope against 
the ever-increasing evils of his sway that Hildebrand pro- 
ceeded to take such a step as had never been ventured on 
before by the boldest of Churchmen. He summoned Henry 
formally to appear before the papal court and defend him- 
self against the accusations brought against him. "For 
the heresy of simony," says the papal letter, this being the 
great ecclesiastical crime which came immediately under 
the cognizance of the Pope. 

This citation addressed to the greatest monarch then 
existing, and by a power but barely escaped from his 
authority and still owing to him a certain allegiance, was 
enough to thrill the world from end to end. Such a thing 
had never happened in the knowledge of man. But before 
we begin so much as to hear of the effect produced, the 
Pope who had, nominally at least, issued the summons, 
the good and saintly Alexander II., after holding the 



n.] THE MONK HILDEBRAND. 225 

papacy for twelve years, died on the 21st of April, 1073. 
His reign for that time had been to a great degree the reign 
of Hildebrand, the ever watchful, ever laborious archdeacon, 
who, let the Pope travel as he liked — and his expeditions 
through Italy were many — was always vigilant at his post, 
always in the centre of affairs, with eyes and ears open 
to everything, and a mind always intent on its purpose. 
Hildebrand' s great idea of the position and duties of the 
Holy See had developed much in those twelve years. It 
had begun to appear a fact, in the eyes of those especially 
who had need of its support. The Normans everywhere 
believed and trusted in it, with good secular reason for so 
doing, and they were at the moment a great power in the 
earth, especially in Italy. If it had not already acquired 
an importance and force in the thoughts of men, more 
subtle and less easy to obtain than external power, it would 
have been impossible for the boldest to launch forth a 
summons to the greatest king of Christendom the future 
Emperor. Already the first step towards that great vis- 
ionary sway, of which poets and sages, as well as ecclesi- 
astics, so long had dreamed, had been made. 

Hildebrand had been virtually at the head of affairs since 
the year 1055, when he had brought across the Alps Victor 
II. chosen by himself, whose acts and policy were his. He 
might have attained the papacy in his own right on more 
than one occasion had he been so minded, but had persist- 
ently held back from the rank while keeping the power. 
But now humility would have been cowardice, and in the 
face of the tremendous contest which he had invited no 
other course was possible to him save to assume the full 
responsibility. Even before the ceremonies of the funeral 
of the Pope were completed, while Alexander lay in state, 
there was a rush of the people and priests to the church of 
the Lateran, where Hildebrand was watching by the bier, 
shouting " Hildebrand ! The blessed St. Peter has elected 

Q 



226 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

Hildebrand." A strange scene of mingled enthusiasm and 
excitement broke the funereal silence in the great solemn 
church, amid its forest of columns all hung with black, 
and glittering with the silver ornaments which are appro- 
priate to mourning, while still the catafalque upon which 
the dead Pope lay rose imposing before the altar. Hilde- 
brand, startled, was about to ascend the pulpit to address 
the people, but was forestalled by an eager bishop who 
hurried into it before him, to make solemn announcement 
of the event. "The Archdeacon is the man who, since the 
time of the holy Pope Leo, has by his wisdom and experi- 
ence contributed most to the exaltation of the Church, 
and has delivered this town from great danger, " he cried. 
The people responded by shouts of " St. Peter has chosen 
Hildebrand ! " We all know how entirely fallacious is this 
manner of testing the sentiment of a people; but yet it 
was the ancient way, the method adopted in those ear- 
lier times when every Christian was a tried and tested 
man, having himself gone through many sufferings for the 
faith. 

It appears that Hildebrand hesitated, which seems strange 
in such a man; one who, if ever man there was, had the 
courage of his opinions and was not likely to shrink 
from the position he himself had created; and it is almost 
incredible that he should have sent a sort of appeal, as 
Muratori states, to Henry himself — the very person whom 
he had so boldly summoned before the tribunal of the 
Church — requesting him to withhold his sanction from 
the election. Muratori considers the evidence dubious, we 
are glad to see, for this strange statement. At all events, 
after a momentary hesitation Hildebrand yielded to the 
entreaties of the people. The decree in which his election 
is recorded is absolutely simple in its narrative. 

" The day of the burial of our lord, the Pope Alexander 
II. (22nd April, 1073), we being assembled in the Basilica 



ii.] THE MONK HILDEBRAND. 227 

of San Pietro in Vincoli, 1 members of the holy Roman 
Church catholic and apostolic, cardinals, bishops, clerks, 
acolytes, sub-deacons, deacons, priests — in presence of the 
venerable bishops and abbots, by consent of the monks, 
and accompanied by the acclamations of a numerous crowd 
of both sexes and of divers orders, we elect as pastor and 
sovereign pontiff a man of religion, strong in the double 
knowledge of things human and divine, the love of justice 
and equity, brave in misfortune, moderate in good fortune, 
and following the words of the apostle, a good man, chaste, 
modest, temperate, hospitable, ruling well his own house, 
nobly trained and instructed from his childhood in the 
bosom of the Church, promoted by the merit of his life to 
the highest rank in the Church, the Archdeacon Hildebrand, 
whom, for the future and for ever, we choose ; and we name 
him Gregory, Pope. Will you have him? Yes, we will 
have him. Do you approve our act? Yes, we approve." 

Nothing can be more graphic than this straightforward 
document, and nothing could give a clearer or more pict- 
uresque view of the primitive popular election. The 
wide -reaching crowd behind, women as well as men, a most 
remarkable detail, filled to its very doors the long length 
of the Basilica. The little group of cardinals and their 
followers made a glow of colour in the midst: the mass 
of clergy in the centre of the great nave lighted up by 
bishops and abbots in their distinctive dresses and darken- 
ing into the surrounding background of almost innumerable 
monks: while the whole assembly listened breathless to 
this simple yet stately declaration, few understanding the 

1 It is supposed by some from this that the election took place in 
this church and not in the Lateran ; but that is contradicted by Gregory 
himself, who says it took place in Ecclesia S. Salvatoris, a name fre- 
quently used for the Lateran. Bowden suggests that " at the close of 
the tumultuous proceedings in the Lateran the cardinal clergy" may 
have "adjourned to St. Peter ad Vincula formally to ratify and 
register the election." 



228 



THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 



words, though all knew the meaning, the large Latin 
phrases rolling over their heads: until it came to that 
well-known name of Hildebrand — Ildebrando — which 
woke a sudden storm of shouts and outcries. Will you 
have this man? Yes, we will have him! Do you approve? 
Approviamo ! Approviamo ! shouted and shrieked the crowd. 
So were the elections made in Venice long years after, 
under the dim arches of St. Marco; but Venice was still a 



r>* 



v »< 
















£7 



'^ 



WHERE THE GHETTO STOOD. 



straggling village, fringing a lagoon, when this great scene 
took place. 

Hildebrand was at this time a man between fifty and 
sixty, having spent the last eighteen years of his life in 
the control and management of the affairs of Rome. He 
was a small, spare man of the most abstemious habits, 
allowing himself as few indulgences in the halls of the 
Lateran as in a monastic cell. His fare was vegetables, 
although he was no vegetarian in our modern sense of the 
word, but ate that food to mortify the flesh and for no 
better reason. Not loner before he made the rueful, and to 



ii.] THE MONK HILDEBRAND. 229 

us comic, confession that he had " ended by giving up leeks 
and onions, having scruples on account of their flavour, 
which was agreeable to him." Scruple could scarcely go 
further in respect to the delights of this world. We are 
glad however that he who was now the great Pope Gregory 
denied himself that onion. It was a dignified act and 
sacrifice to the necessities of his great position. 



Ss>' O 




FROM SAN GREGORIO MAGNO. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE POPE GREGORY VII. 



THE career of Hildebrand up to the moment in which he 
ascended the papal throne could scarcely be called other 
than a successful one. He had attained many of his aims. 
He had awakened the better part of the Church to a sense 
of the vices that had grown up in her midst, purified in 
many quarters the lives of her priests, and elevated the 
mind and ideal of Christendom. But bad as the vices of 
the clergy were, the ruling curse of simony was worse, to a 
man whose prevailing dream and hope was that of a great 
power holding up over all the world the standards of truth 
and righteousness in the midst of the wrongs and conten- 
tions of men. A poor German priest holding fast in his 
distant corner by the humble wife or half-permitted female 
companion at whose presence law and charity winked, was 
indeed a dreadful thought, meaning dishonour and sacrilege 
to the austere monk ; but the bishops and archbishops over 
him who were so little different from the fierce barons., their 

230 



ch. in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 231 

kin and compeers, who had procured their benefices by the 
same intrigues, the same tributes and subserviences, the same 
violence, by which these barons in many cases held their 
fiefs, how was it possible that such men could hold the bal- 
ance of justice, and promote peace and purity and the reign 
of God over the world ? That they should help in any way 
in that great mission which the new Pope felt himself to 
have received from the Head of the Church was almost 
beyond hope. They vexed his soul wherever he turned, 
men with no motive, no inspiration beyond that of their 
fellows, ready to scheme and struggle for the aggrandise- 
ment of the Church, if you will — for the increase of their 
own greatness and power and those of the corporations sub- 
ject to them: but as little conscious of that other and holier 
ambition, that hope and dream of a reign of righteousness, 
as were their fellows and brethren, the dukes and counts, 
the fighting men, the ambitious princes of Germany and 
Lombardy. Until the order of chiefs and princes of the 
Church could be purified, Hildebrand had known, and Greg- 
ory felt to the bottom of his heart, that nothing effectual 
could be done. 

The Cardinal Archdeacon of Rome, under Popes less in- 
spired than himself — who were, however, if not strong 
enough to originate, at least acquiescent, and willing to 
adopt and sanction what he did — had carried on a holy 
war against simony wherever found. He had condemned it 
by means of repeated councils, he had poured forth every 
kind of appeal to men's consciences, and exhortations to 
repentance, without making very much impression. The 
greatest offices were still sold in spite of him. They were 
given to tonsured ruffians and debauchees who had no claim 
but their wealth to ascend into the high places of the Church, 
and who, in short, were but secular nobles with a difference, 
and the fatal addition of a cynicism almost beyond belief, 
though singularly mingled at times with superstitious ter- 



232 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

rors. Hildebrand had struggled against these men and 
their influence desperately, by every means in his power: 
and Pope Gregory, with stronger methods at command, was 
bound, if possible, to extirpate the evil. This had raised 
him up a phalanx of enemies on every side, wherever there 
was a dignitary of the Church whose title was not clear, or a 
prince who derived a portion of his revenue from the traffic 
in ecclesiastical appointments. The degenerate young King 
not yet Emperor, who supported his every scheme of 
rapine and conquest by the gold of the ambitious priests 
whom he made into prelates at his will, was naturally the 
first of these enemies : Guibert of Ravenna, more near and 
readily offensive, one of the most powerful ecclesiastical 
nobles in Italy, sat watchful if he might catch the new 
Pope tripping, or find any opportunity of accusing him : 
Robert Guiscard, the greatest of the Normans, who had 
been so much the servant and partisan of the late Popes, 
remained sullen and apart, giving no allegiance to this: 
Pome itself was surrounded by a fierce and audacious nobil- 
ity, who had always been the natural enemies of the Pope, 
unless when he happened to be their nominee, and more 
objectionable than themselves. Thus the world was full of 
dark and scowling faces. A circle of hostility both at his 
gates and in the distance frowned unkindly about him, when 
the age of Hildebrand was over, and that of Gregory began. 
All his great troubles and sufferings were in this latter part 
of his life. Nothing in the shape of failure had befallen him 
np to this point. He had met with great respect and hon- 
our, his merit and power had been recognised almost from 
his earliest years. Great princes and great men — Henry 
himself, the father of the present degenerate Henry, a noble 
Emperor, honouring the Church and eager for its purification 
— had felt themselves honoured by the friendship of the 
monk who had neither family nor wealth to recommend 
him. But when Pope Gregory issued from his long proba- 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 233 

tion and took into his hand the papal sceptre, all these 
things had changed. Whether he was aware by any pre- 
monition of the darker days upon which he had now fallen 
who can say ? It is certain that confronting them he bated 
no jot of heart or hope. 

He appears to us at first as very cautious, very desirous 
of giving the adversary no occasion to blaspheme. The 
summons issued in the name of the late Pope to Henry re- 
quiring him to appear and answer in Rome the charges 
made against him, seems to have been dropped at Alexan- 
der's death : and when his messengers came over the Alps 
demanding by what right a Pope had been consecrated with- 
out his consent, Gregory made mild reply that he was not 
consecrated, but was awaiting not the nomination but the 
consent of the Emperor, and that not till that had been 
received would he carry out the final rites. These were 
eventually performed with some sort of acquiescence from 
Henry, given through his wise and prudent ambassador, on 
the Feast of St. Peter, the 29th June, 1073. Gregory did 
what he could, as appears, to continue this mild treatment 
of Henry with all regard to his great position and power. 
He attempted to call together a very intimate council to dis- 
cuss the state of affairs between the King and himself : a 
council of singular construction, which, but that the ques- 
tions as to the influence and place of women are questions 
as old as history, and have been decided by every age accord- 
ing to no formal law but the character of the individuals be- 
fore them, might be taken for an example of enlightenment 
before his time in Gregory's mind. He invited Duke Rudolf 
of Suabia, one of Henry's greatest subjects, a man of relig- 
ious character and much reverence for the Holy See, to come 
to Rome, and in common with himself, the Empress Agnes, 
the two Countesses of Tuscany, the Bishop of Como (who 
was the confessor of Agnes), and other God-fearing persons, 
to consider the crisis at which the Church had arrived, and 



234 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

to hear and give advice upon the Pope's intentions and 
projects. The French historian Villemain throws discredit 
upon this projected consultation of "an ambitious vassal of 
the King of Germany and three -women, one of whom had 
once been a prisoner in the camp of Henry III., the other 
had been brought up from infancy in the hate of the empire 
and the love of the Church, and the last was a fallen em- 
press who was more the penitent of Eome than the mother 
of Henry." This seems, however, a futile enumeration. 
There could surely be no better defender found for a son 
accused than his mother, who we have no reason to suppose 
was ever estranged from him personally, and who shortly 
after went upon an embassy to him, and was received with 
every honour. Beatrice, on the other hand, had been the 
prisoner of his father the great Emperor, and not of young 
Henry of whom she was the relative and friend, and between 
whom and the Pope, as all good statesmen must have seen, 
it was of the greatest importance to Europe that there should 
be peace; while any strong personal feeling which might 
exist would be modified by Gregory himself, by Eaymond 
of Como, and the wisest heads of Kome. 

But this board of advice and conciliation never sat, so we 
need not comment upon its possible concomitants. In every 
act of his first year, however, Gregory showed a desire to 
conciliate Henry rather than to defy him. The young king 
had his hands very full, and his great struggle with the 
Saxon nobles and people was not at the moment turning in 
his favour. And he had various natural defenders and 
partisans about the Roman Court. The Abbot Hugo of 
Cluny, who was one of Gregory's dearest friends, had been 
the young king's preceptor, and bore him a strong affection. 
We have no reason to believe that the influence of Agnes 
was not all on the side of her son, if not to support his acts, 
at least to palliate and excuse them. With one of these in 
his most intimate council, and one an anxious watcher out- 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 235 

side, both in command of his ear and attention, it wonld 
have been strange if Gregory had been unwilling to hear 
anything that was in Henry's favonr. 

And in fact something almost more than a full reconcilia- 
tion seems to have been effected between the new Pope and 
the young king, so desirous of winning the imperial crown, 
and conscious that Gregory's help was of the utmost impor- 
tance to him. Henry on his side wrote a letter to his 
" most loving lord and father," his " most desired lord," 
breathing such an exemplary mind, so much penitence and 
submission, that Gregory describes it as " full of sweetness 
and obedience : " while the Pope, if not altogether removing 
the sword that hung suspended over Henry's head, at least 
received his communications graciously, and gave him full 
time and encouragement to change his mind and become 
the most trusted lieutenant of the Holy See. The King 
was accordingly left free to pursue his own affairs and his 
great struggle with the Saxons without any further ques- 
tion of ecclesiastical interference : while Gregory spent the 
whole ensuing year in a visitation of Italy, and much corre- 
spondence and conference on the subject of simony and 
other abuses in the Church. When he returned to Eome 
he endeavoured, but in vain, to act as peacemaker between 
Henry and the Saxons. And it was not till June in the 
year 1074, when he called together the first of the Lateran 
Councils, an assembly afterwards renewed yearly, a sort of 
potential Convocation, that further steps were taken. With 
this the first note of the great warfare to follow was struck. 
The seriousness of the letters by which he summoned its 
members sufficiently shows the importance attached to it. 

" The princes and governors of this world, seeking their own interest 
and not that of Jesus Christ, trample under foot all the veneration they 
owe to the Church, and oppress her like a slave. The priests and those 
charged with the conduct of the Church sacrifice, the law of God, re- 
nounce their obligations towards God and their flocks, seeking in eccle- 
siastical dignities only the glory of this world, and consuming in pomp 



236 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

and pride what ought to serve for the salvation of many. The people, 
without prelates or sage counsellors to lead them in the way of virtue, 
and who are instructed by the example of their chiefs in all pernicious 
things, go astray into every evil way, and bear the name of Christian 
without its works, without even preserving the principle of the faith. 
For these reasons, confident in the mercies of God, we have resolved 
to assemble a Synod in order to seek with the aid of our brethren for 
a remedy to these evils, and that we may not see in our time the irrep- 
arable ruin and destruction of the Church. Wherefore we pray you 
as a brother, and warn you in the name of the blessed Peter, prince of 
apostles, to appear at the day fixed, convoking by this letter, and by 
your own, your suffragan bishops ; for we can vindicate the freedom 
of religion and of ecclesiastical authority with much more surety and 
strength according as we find ourselves surrounded by the counsels of 
your prudence, and by the presence of our brethren. 1 ' 

A few Italian princes, Gisulfo of Salerno, Azzo d' Este, 
Beatrice and Matilda of Tuscany, were convoked to the 
council and held seats in it. The measures passed were 
very explicit and clear. They condemned the simoniacal 
clergy in every rank, deposing them from their positions 
and commanding them to withdraw from the ministrations 
of the altar. The same judgment was passed upon those 
who lived with wives or concubines. Both classes were 
put beyond the pale of the Church, and the people were 
forbidden, on pain of sharing their doom, to receive the 
sacraments from them, or to yield them obedience. Nothing 
more thorough and far-reaching could be. Hitherto the 
Popes had proceeded by courts of investigation, by exami- 
nation of individuals, in which the alternative of repentance 
and renunciation was always open to the prelate who had 
perhaps inadvertently fallen into these crimes. But such 
gentle dealings had been but very partially successful. 
Here and there an archbishop or great abbot had been 
convicted by his peers, and made to descend from his high 
estate — here and there a great personage had risen in his 
place and made confession. Some had retired to the cloister, 
putting all their pomps and glories aside, and made a good 
end. But as is usual after every religious revival, life had 
risen up again and gone upon its usual course, and the 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 237 

bishoprics thus vacated had probably been sold to the high- 
est bidder or yielded to the most violent assailant, as if no 
such reformation had ever been. 

The matter had gone too far now for any such occasional 
alleviations ; and Gregory struck at the whole body of proud 
prelates, lords of secular as well as ecclesiastical greatness, 
men whose position was as powerful in politics and the 
affairs of the empire as was that of the princes and mar- 
graves who were their kin, and whom they naturally sup- 
ported — as the others had supported them by money and 
influence in their rise to power : but who had very little 
time for the affairs of the Church, and less still for the pres- 
ervation of peace and the redress of wrong. 

The other measures passed at this council were more 
searching still ; they were aimed against the disorders into 
which the clergy had fallen, and chiefly what was to Greg- 
ory and his followers the great criminality, of married priests, 
who abounded in the Church. In this the lower orders of 
the clergy were chiefly assailed, for the more important 
members of the hierarchy did not marry though they might 
be vicious otherwise. But the rural priests, the little-edu- 
cated and but little-esteemed clerks who abounded in every 
town and village, were very generally affected by the vice — 
if vice it was — of marriage, which was half legal and widely 
tolerated: and their determination not to abandon it was 
furious. Meetings of the clergy to oppose this condemna- 
tion were held in all quarters, and often ended in riot, the 
priests declaring that none of the good things of the Church 
fell to their lot, but that rather than give up their wives, 
their sole compensation, they would die. This was not 
likely to make Gregory's proceedings less determined : but 
it may easily be imagined what a prodigious convulsion such 
an edict was likely to make in the ecclesiastical world. 

It is said by the later historians that the Empress Agnes 
was made use of, with her attendant bishop and confessor, 



238 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

to carry these decrees to Henry's court : though this does 
not seem to be sanctioned by the elder authorities, who place 
the mission of Agnes in the previous year, and reckon it 
altogether one of peace and conciliation. But Henry still 
continued in a conciliatory frame of mind. His own affairs 
were not going well, and he was anxious to retain the Pope's 
support in the midst of his conflicts with his subjects. 
Neither do the great dignitaries appear to have made any 
public protest or resistance : it was the poor priests upon 
whom individually this edict pressed heavily, who were 
roused almost to the point of insurrection. 

One of the most curious effects of the decree was the spirit 
roused among the laity thus encouraged to judge and even 
to refuse the ministrations of an unworthy priest. Not 
only was their immediate conduct affected to acts of spritual 
insubordination, but a fundamental change seems to have 
taken place in their conception of the priest's character. 
No doubt Gregory's legislation must have originated that 
determined though illogical opposition to a married priest- 
hood, and disgust with the idea, which has had so singular 
a sway in Catholic countries ever since, and which would at 
the present moment we believe make any change in the celi- 
bate character of the priesthood impossible even were all 
other difficulties overcome. We are not aware that it had 
existed in any force before. The thing had been almost too 
common for remark : and there seems to have been no fierce 
opposition to the principle. It arose now gradually yet 
with a force beyond control : there were many cases of lay- 
men baptizing their children themselves, rather then give 
them into the hands of a polluted priest — until there arose 
almost a risk of general indifference to this sacrament be- 
cause of the rising conviction that the hands which adminis- 
tered it were unworthy: and other religious observances 
were neglected in the same way, an effect which must 
have been the reverse of anything intended by the Pope. 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 239 

To this hour in all Catholic countries an inexpressible dis- 
gust with the thought, mingles even with the theory that 
perhaps society might be improved were the priest a mar- 
ried man, and so far forced to content himself with the 
affairs of his own house. Probably it was Gregory's strong 
denunciation, and his charge to the people not to reverence, 
not to obey men so soiled : as well as the conviction long 
cultivated by the Church, and by this time become a dogma, 
that the ascetic life was in all cases the holiest — which 
originated this powerful general sentiment, more potent in 
deciding the fact of a celibate clergy than all the ecclesiasti- 
cal decrees in the world. 

In the second Lateran Council held in the next year, at 
the beginning of Lent, along with the reiteration of the 
laws in respect to simony and the priesthood, a solemn 
decree against lay investiture was passed by the Church. 
This law transferred the struggle to a higher ground. It 
was no longer bishops and prelates of all classes, no longer 
simple priests, but the greatest sovereigns, all of whom had 
as a matter of course given ecclesiastical benefices as they 
gave feudals fiefs, who were now involved. The law was 
as follows : 

"Whosoever shall receive from the hands of a layman 
a bishopric, or an abbey, shall not be counted among the 
bishops and abbots, nor share their privileges. We inter- 
dict him from entrance into the Church and from the grace 
of St. Peter until he shall have resigned the dignity thus 
acquired by ambition and disobedience, which are equal to 
idolatry. Also, if any emperor, duke, marquis, count, or 
other secular authority shall presume to give investiture of 
a bishopric or other dignity of the Church, let him under- 
stand that the same penalty shall be exacted from him." 

The position of affairs between Pope and Emperor was 
thus fundamentally altered. The father of Henry, a much 
more faithful son of the Church, had almost without oppo- 



240 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

sition made Popes by his own will where now his son was 
interdicted from appointing a single bishop. The evil was 
great enough perhaps for this great remedy, and Gregory, 
who had gone so far, was restrained now by no prudent 
precautions from proceeding to the utmost length possible. 
The day of prudence was over ; he had entered upon a path 
in which there was no drawing back. That it was not done 
lightly or without profound and painful thought, and a 
deep sense of danger and impending trouble, is apparent 
from the following letter in which the Pope unbosoms him- 
self to the head of his former convent, the great Hugo of 
Cluny, his own warm friend, and at the same time Henry's 
tutor and constant defender. 

"I am overwhelmed (he writes) with great sorrow and trouble. 
Wherever I look, south, north, or west, I see not a single bishop whose 
promotion and conduct are legal, and who governs the Christian people 
for the love of Christ, and not by temporal ambition. As for secular 
princes, there is not one who prefers the glory of God to his own, or 
justice to interest. Those among whom I live — the Romans, the Lom- 
bards, the Normans — are, as I tell them to their faces, worse than Jews 
and Pagans. And when I return within myself, I am so overwhelmed 
by the weight of life that I feel no longer hope in anything but the mercy 
of Christ." 

Notwithstanding the supreme importance of this ques- 
tion, and Gregory's deep sense of the tremendous character 
of the struggle on which he had thus engaged, matters 
of public morality in other ways were not sacrificed to 
these great proceedings for the honour of the Church. He 
not only himself assumed, but pressed upon all spiritual 
authorities under him, the duty and need of prompt inter- 
ference in the cause of justice and public honesty. The 
letters which follow were called forth by a remarkable 
breach of these laws of honesty and the protection due 
to strangers and travellers which are fundamental rules 
of society. This was the spoliation of certain merchants 
robbed in their passage through Prance, and from whom 
the Pope accuses the young King Philip I. to have taken, 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 241 

"like a brigand, an immense sum of money." Gregory 
addresses himself to the bishops of France in warning and 
entreaty as follows : 

" As it is not possible that such crimes should escape the sentence 
of the Supreme Judge, we pray you and we warn you with true charity 
to be careful and not to draw upon yourself the prophet's curse : ' Woe 
to him who turns back his sword from blood ' — that is to say, as you 
well understand, who does not use the sword of the Word for the cor- 
rection of worldly men ; for you are in fault, my brethren, you who, 
instead of opposing these vile proceedings with all the rigour of the 
priesthood, encourage wickedness by your silence. It is useless to 
speak of fear. United and armed to defend the just, your force will 
be such that you will be able to quench evil passions in penitence. 
And even if there were danger, that is no reason for giving up the 
freedom of your priesthood. We pray you, then, and we warn you 
by the authority of the Apostles, to unite in the interest of your coun- 
try, of your glory and salvation, in a common and unanimous counsel. 
Go to the king, tell him of his shame, of his danger and that of his 
kingdom. Show him to his face how criminal are his acts and motives, 
endeavour to move him by every inducement that he may undo the 
harm which he has done. 

" But if he will not listen to you, and if, scorning the wrath of God, 
and indifferent to his own royal dignity, to his own salvation and that 
of his people, he is obstinate in the hardness of his heart, let him hear 
as from our mouth that he cannot escape much longer the sword of 
apostolic punishment." 

These are not such words as Peter was ever commissioned 
in Holy Writ to give forth ; but granting all the pretensions 
of Peter's successors, as so many good Christians do, it is 
no ignoble voice which thus raises itself in warning, which 
thus denounces the vengeance of the Church against the 
evil-doer, be he bishop, clown, or king. Gregory had neither 
armies nor great wealth to support his interference with the 
course of the world — he had only right and justice, and a 
profound faith in his mission. He risked everything — his 
life (so small a matter ! ), his position, even the safety of 
the Church itself, which these potentates could have crushed 
under their mailed shoes ; but that there shotdd be one voice 
which would not lie, one champion who would not be turned 
aside, one witness for good, always and everywhere, against 
evil, was surely as noble a pretension as ever was lifted 



242 THE MAKERS OP MODERN ROME. [chap. 

under heaven. It was to extend the power of Rome, all 
the historians say ; which no doubt he wished to do. But 
whether to extend the power of Koine was his first object, 
or to pursue guilt and cruelty and falsehood out of the very 
boundaries of the world if one man could drive them forth, 
God only can judge. When there are two evident motives, 
however, it is not always wise to believe that the worst is 
the one to choose. 

In most curious contrast to these great and daring utter- 
ances is the incident, quite temporary and of no real impor- 
tance, in his life, which occurred to Pope Gregory at the 
very moment when he was thus threatening a world lying in 
wickedness with the thunderbolts of Rome. The city which 
had gone through so many convulsions, and was now the 
centre of the pilgrimages of the world, was still in its form 
and construction the ancient Rome, and more or less a city 
of ruins. The vast open spaces, forums, circuses, great 
squares, and amphitheatres, which made old Rome so spa- 
cious and magnificent, still existed as they still to a certain 
extent exist. But no great builder had as yet arisen among 
the Popes, no one wealthy enough or with leisure enough 
to order the city upon new lines, to give it a modern shape, 
or reduce it to the dimensions necessary for its limited popu- 
lation. It was still a great quarry for the world, full of 
treasures that could be carried away, a reservoir and store- 
house of relics to which every man might help himself. 
Professor Lanciani, the accomplished and learned savant to 
whom we owe so much information concerning the ancient 
city, has shown us how much mediaeval covetousness in this 
way had to do with the actual disappearance of ancient 
buildings, stone by stone. But this was not the only offence 
committed against the monuments of the past. The great 
edifices of the classic age were often turned, not without 
advantage in the sense of the picturesque, into strongholds 
of the nobles, sometimes almost as much isolated amid the 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 243 

great gaps of ruins as in the Campagna outside. The only 
buildings belonging to the time were monasteries, generally 
surrounded by strong walls, capable of affording protection 
to a powerful community, and in which the humble and poor 
could find refuge in time of trouble. These establishments, 
and the medigeval fortresses and towers built into the midst 
of the ruins, occupied with many wild spaces between, where 
the luxuriant herbage buried fallen pillars and broken foun- 
dations, the wastes of desolation which filled up half the area 
of the town. The population seems to have clustered about 
the eastern end of the city ; all the life of which one reads, 
except an occasional tumult around St. Peter's and north of 
St. Angelo, seems to have passed on the slopes or under the 
shadow of the Aventine and Coelian hills, from thence to 
the Latin gate, and the Pope's palace there, the centre of 
government and state — and on the hill of the Capitol, where 
still the people gathered when there was a motive for a pop- 
ular assembly. The ordinary populace must have swarmed 
in whatsoever half-ruined barracks of old palaces, or squa- 
lid hivts of new erection hanging on to their skirts, might be 
attainable in these quarters, clustering together for warmth 
and safety, while the rest of the city lay waste, sprinkled 
with ruins and desolate paths, with great houses here and 
there in which the strangely mixed race bearing the names, 
often self -appropriated, of ancient Roman patrician families, 
lived and robbed and made petty war, and besieged each 
other within their strong walls. 

One of these fortified houses or towers, built at or on the 
bridge of St. Angelo — in which the noble owner sat like 
a spider, drawing in flies to his web, taking toll of every 
stranger who entered Eome by that way — belonged to a 
certain Cencio 1 or Cencius of the family of Tusculum, the 

1 This personage is always called Cencio in the Italian records. 
He is supposed by some to have been of the family of the Crescenzi, 
of which name, as well as of Vincenzo, this is the diminutive. 



244: THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

son of the Prsefect of Rome. The Prsefect, unlike his 
family, was one of the most devoted adherents of the 
Popes ; he is, indeed, in the curious glimpse afforded to us 
by history, one of the most singular figures that occur in 
that crowded foreground. A mediaeval noble and high offi- 
cial, he was at the same time a lay-preacher, delighted to 
exercise his gift when the more legitimate sermon failed 
from any cause, and only too proud, it would appear, of 
hearing his own voice in the pulpit. That his son should 
be of a very different disposition was perhaps not to be 
wondered at. Cencius was as turbulent as his father was 
pious ; but he must have been a soldier of some note, as he 
held the post of Captain of St. Angelo, and in that capacity 
had maintained during a long siege the anti-pope Cadalous, 
or Honorius II., from whom, brigand as he was, he exacted 
a heavy ransom before permitting the unfortunate and too 
ambitious prelate to steal away like a thief in the night 
when his chance was evidently over. Cencius would seem 
to have lost his post in St. Angelo, but he maintained his 
robber's tower on the other end of the bridge, and was one 
of the most dangerous and turbulent of these internal ene- 
mies of Pome. During an interval of banishment, following 
a more than usually cruel murder, he had visited Germany, 
and had met at young Henry's court with many people to 
whom Pope Gregory was obnoxious, from Gottfried the 
Hunchback, the husband of the Countess Matilda, to the 
young king himself. "Whether what followed was the result 
of any conspiracy, however, or if it was an outburst of mad 
vengeance on the part of Cencius himself, or the mere cal- 
culating impulse of a freebooter to secure a good ransom, is 
not known. A conspiracy, with Godfrey at the head of it, 
not without support from Henry, and the knowledge at 
least of the Archbishop of Ravenna and Robert Guiscard, 
all deeply irritated by the Pope's recent proceedings, was 
of course the favourite idea at the time. But no clear 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 245 

explanation of motives has ever been attained, and only 
the facts are known. 

On Christmas-eve it was the habit of the Popes to cele- 
brate a midnight mass in the great basilica of Sta. Maria 
Maggiore in what was then a lonely and dangerous neigh- 
bourhood, though not very far from the Lateran Church and 
palace. It was usually the occasion of a great concourse 
from all parts of the city, attracted by the always popular 
midnight celebration. But on Christmas-eve of the year 
1076 (Muratori says 1075) a great storm burst over the 
city as the hour approached for the ceremony. Torrents 
of rain, almost tropical in violence, as rain so often is in 
Rome, poured down from the blackness of the skies, extin- 
guishing even the torches by which the Pope and his dimin- 
ished procession made their way to the great church, blazing 
out cheerfully with all its lighted windows into the night. 
Besides the priests only a very small number of the people 
followed, and there was no such murmur and rustle of sym- 
pathy and warmth of heart as such an assembly generally 
calls forth. But the great altar was decorated for Christ- 
mas, and the Pope attired in his robes, and everything 
shining with light and brightness within, though the storm 
raged without. The mass was almost over, Gregory and 
the priests had communicated, the faithful company assem- 
bled were receiving their humbler share of the sacred feast, 
and in a few minutes the office would have been completed, 
when suddenly the church was filled with noise and clamour 
and armed men. There was no one to defend the priests 
at the altar, even had it been possible in the suddenness of 
the assault to do so. Cencius's band was composed of ruff- 
ians from every region, united only in their lawlessness 
and crime; they seized the Pope at the altar, one of them 
wounding him slightly in the forehead. It is said that he 
neither asked for mercy nor uttered a complaint, nor even 
an expostulation, but permitted himself without a word to 



246 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

be dragged out of the church, stripped of his robes, placed 
on a horse behind one of the troopers, and carried off into 
the night not knowing where. 

All this happened before the terrified priests and people 
— many of the latter probably poor women from the hovels 
round about — recovered their surprise. The wild band, 
with the Pope in the midst, galloped out into the blackness 
and the rain, passing under garden walls and the towers of 
silent monasteries, where the monks, too much accustomed 
to such sounds to take much notice, would hear the rush of 
the horses and the rude voices in the night with thankful- 
ness that no thundering at the convent gates called upon 
them to give the free lances shelter. It appears that it was 
not to Cencius's stronghold on the bridge but to the house 
of one of his retainers that this great prize was conveyed. 
Here Gregory, in the cassock which he had worn under his 
gorgeous papal dress, wet and bleeding from the wound in 
his forehead, was flung without ceremony into an empty 
room. The story is that some devout man in the crowd 
and a Roman lady, by some chance witnessing the arrival 
of the band, stole in with them, and found their way to the 
place in which the Pope lay, covering him with their own 
furs and mantles and attending to his wound. And thus 
passed the Christmas morning in the misery of that cruel cold 
which, though rare, is nowhere more bitter than in Pome. 

In the meantime the terrified congregation in Sta. Maria 
Maggiore had recovered its senses, and messengers hurried 
out in all directions to trace the way by which the free- 
booters had gone, and to spread the news of the Pope's 
abduction. The storm had by this time passed over, and 
the people were easily roused on the eve of the great festi- 
val. Torches began to gleam by all the darkling ways, and 
the population poured forth in the excitement of a great 
event. It would seem that in all the tumultuous and 
factious city there was but one thought of horror at the 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 249 

sacrilege, and determination to save the Pope if it were 
still possible. Gregory was not, like his great predecessor 
the first of that name, the idol of his people. He had not the 
wealth with which many great ecclesiastics had secured the 
homage of the often famished crowd; and a stern man, 
with no special geniality of nature, and views that went so 
far beyond the local interests of Rome, he does not seem 
the kind of ruler to have secured popular favour. Yet the 
city had never been more unanimous, more determined in 
its resolution. The tocsin was sounded in all the quarters 
of Rome during that night of excitement ; every soldier was 
called forth, guards were set at all the gates, lest the Pope 
should be conveyed out of the city ; and the agitated crowd 
flocked to the Capitol, the only one of the seven hills of 
Rome where some kind of repair and restoration had been 
attempted, to consult, rich and poor together, people and 
nobles, what was to be done. To this spot came the scouts 
sent out in search of information, to report their discoveries. 
They had found that the Pope was still in Rome, and where 
he was — a prisoner, but as yet unharmed. 

With one impulse the people of Rome, forming them- 
selves into an undignified but enthusiastic army, rushed 
down from their place of meeting towards the robber's 
castle. We hear of engines of war, and all the cumbrous 
adjuncts of a siege and means of breaching the walls, as 
if those articles had been all ready in preparation for any 
emergency. The palace, though strong, could not stand the 
assault of the whole population, and soon it was necessary 
to bring the Pope from his prison and show him at a win- 
dow to pacify the assailants. Cencius did all that a ruffian 
in such circumstances would naturally do. He first tried 
to extract money and lands from the Pope's terrors, and 
then flung himself on his knees before Gregory, imploring 
forgiveness and protection. The first attempt was useless, 
for Gregory was not afraid ; the second was more successful, 



250 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME [chap. 

for remorseless to the criminals whose evil acts or example 
injured the Church, the Pope was merciful enough to ordi- 
nary sinners, and had never condemned any man to death. 
"■ What you have done to me I pardon you as a father ; but 
what you have done against God and the Church must be 
atoned for," said Gregory, still at the mercy of any rude 
companion in that band of ruffians : and he commanded his 
captor to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to cleanse him- 
self from this sin. The Pope was conveyed out of his prison 
by the excited and enthusiastic crowd, shouting and weep- 
ing, half for joy, and half at sight of the still bleeding scar 
on his forehead. But weak and exhausted as he was, with- 
out food, after a night and almost a day of such excitement, 
in which he had not known from one hour to another what 
might happen, helpless in the hands of his enemies, Gregory 
had but one thought — to conclude his mass which he had 
not finished when he was interrupted at the altar. He went 
back in his cassock, covered by the stranger's furred cloak, 
along the same wild way over which he had been hurried in 
the darkness ; and followed by the entire population, which 
swarmed into every corner and blocked every entrance, re- 
turned to the great basilica, where he once more ascended 
the altar steps, completed the mass, offered his thanksgiv- 
ings to God, and blessed and thanked his deliverers, before 
he sought in the quick falling twilight of the winter day 
the rest of his own house. 

It is common to increase the effect of this most pictu- 
resque scene by describing Gregory as an aged man, old and 
worn out, in the midst of his fierce foes ; but he was barely 
sixty and still in the fulness of his strength, though spare 
and shrunken by many fasts and still more anxieties. That 
he had lost nothing of his vigour is evident, and in fact the 
incident, though never forgotten as a dramatic and telling 
episode by the historians, was a mere incident of no im- 
Xaortance whatever in his life. 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 251 

In the meantime the Emperor Henry, who had been dis- 
posed to humility and penitence by the efforts of his mother, 
and by the distresses of his own position during a doubt- 
ful and dangerous intestine war, in which all at the time 
seemed to be going against him, had subdued the Saxons 
and recovered the upper hand : and, thus victorious in his 
own country, was no longer disposed to bow his neck under 
any spiritual yoke. He had paid no attention to Gregory's 
commands in respect to simony nor to the ordinance against 
lay investiture which had proceeded from the Council of 
1075 ; but had, on the contrary, filled up several bishoprics 
in the old way, continued to receive the excommunicated 
nobles, and treated Gregory's decrees as if they had never 
been. His indignation at the Pope's interference — that 
indignation which every secular prince has always shown 
when interfered with by the Holy See, and which so easily 
translates the august titles of the successor of St. Peter, the 
Vicar of Christ, into a fierce denunciation of the "Italian 
j>riest" whom mediaeval princes feared and hated — was 
only intensified by his supreme pretensions as Emperor, and 
grew in virulence as Gregory's undaunted front and con- 
tinued exercise, so far as anathemas would do it, of the 
weapons of church discipline, stood steadily before him. It 
is very possible that the complete discomfiture of Cencius's 
attempt upon the Pope's liberty or life, to which Henry is 
believed to have been accessory, and the disgrace and ridi- 
cule of that failure, irritated and exasperated the young 
monarch, and that he felt henceforward that no terms could 
be kept with the man whom he had failed to destroy. 

Gregory, on the other hand, finding all his efforts unsuc- 
cessful to gain the submission of Henry, had again taken 
the strong step of summoning him to appear before the 
yearly council held in Eome at the beginning of Lent, there 
to answer for his indifference to its previous decisions. The 
following letter sent to Henry a short time after the attempt 



252 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

of Cencius, but in which not a word of that attempt is said, 
is a remarkable example of Gregory's dignified and unyield- 
ing attitude : 

" Gregory, servant of the servants of God. 

"To Henry, king, salutation and the blessing of the apostles, if he 
obeys the apostolic see, as becomes a Christian king. 

" Considering with anxiety, within ourselves, to what tribunal we 
have to give an account of the dispensation of the ministry which has 
been extended to us by the Prince of the apostles, we send you with 
doubt our apostolic blessing, since we are assured that you live in close 
union with men excommunicated by the judgment of the Apostolic See 
and the censure of the synod. If this is true, you will yourself per- 
ceive that you cannot receive the grace of blessing either divine or 
apostolic, until you have dismissed from your society these excom- 
municated persons, or in forcing them to express their repentance 
have yourself obtained absolution by penitence 'and expiation. We 
counsel your highness, if you are guilty in this respect, to have recourse, 
without delay, to the advice of some pious bishop, who, under our 
authority, will direct you what to do, and absolve you, informing us 
with your consent of your penitence." 

The Pope goes on to point out, recalling to Henry's mind 
the promises he had made, and the assurances given — how 
different his conduct has been from his professions. 

" In respect to the church of Milan, how you have kept the engage- 
ments made with your mother, and with the bishops our colleagues, 
and with what intention you made these promises, the event itself 
shows. And now to add wound to wound, you have disposed of the 
churches of Spoleto and of Fermo. Is it possible that a man dares to 
transfer or give a church to persons unknown to us^, while the imposi- 
tion of hands is not permitted, except on those who are well known 
and approved? Your own dignity demands, since you call yourself 
the son of the Church, that you should honour him who is at her head, 
that is the blessed Peter, the prince of the apostles, to whom, if you 
are of the flock of the Lord, you have been formally confided by the 
voice and authority of the Lord — him to whom Christ said ' Feed my 
sheep.' So long as we, sinful and unworthy as we are, hold his place 
in his seat and apostolical government, it is he who receives all that 
you address to us either by writing or speech ; and while we read your 
letters or listen to your words, it is he who beholds with a penetrating 
eye what manner of heart it is from which they come." 

In this dignified and serious remonstrance there is not a 
word of the personal insult and injury which the Pope him- 
self had suffered. He passes over Cencius and his foiled 



in„] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 253 

villainy as if it had never been ; but while Gregory could 
forget, Henry could not : and historians have traced to the 
failure of this desperate attempt to subdue or extinguish 
the too daring, too steadfast Pontiff, the new spirit — the 
impulse of equally desperate rage and vengeance — which 
took possession of the monarch, finding, after all his victo- 
ries, that here was one opponent whom he could not over- 
come, whose voice could reach over all Christendom, and 
who bore penalties in his unarmed hand at which no 
crowned head could afford to smile. To crush the auda- 
cious priest to the earth, if not by the base ministry of 
Roman bravos, then by the scarcely more clean hands of 
German barons and excommunicated bishops, was the im- 
pulse which now filled Henry's mind. He invoked a coun- 
cil in Worms, a month after the failure in Rome, which 
was attended by a large number, not only of the German 
nobility, but of the great ecclesiastics who nowhere had 
greater power, wealth, and influence than in Teutonic coun- 
tries. Half of them had been condemned by Gregory for 
simony or other vices, many of them were aware that they 
were liable to similar penalties. The reformer Pope, who 
after the many tentatives and half-measures of his prede- 
cessors, was now supreme, and would shrink from nothing 
in his great mission of purifying the Church, was a constant 
danger and fear to these great mediaeval nobles varnished 
over with the names of churchmen. One stroke had failed : 
but another was quite possible which great Henry the king, 
triumphant over all his enemies, might surely with their 
help and sanction bring to pass. 

The peers spiritual and temporal, the princes who scorned 
the interference of a priest, and the priests who feared the 
loss of all their honours and the disgrace and humiliation 
with which the Pope threatened them, came together in 
crowds to pull down their enemy from his throne. Nothing 
so bold had ever been attempted since' Christendom had 



254 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

grown into the comity of nations it now was. Cencius had 
pulled the Pope from the altar steps in the night and dark : 
Henry and his court assembled in broad day, with every 
circumstance of pomp and publicity, to drag him from his 
spiritual throne. It would be difficult to say whether the 
palm of fierceness and brutality should be given to the 
brigand of the Tusculan hills, or to the great king, princes, 
archbishops, and bishops of the Teutonic empire. Cencius 
swore in his beard, unheard of after generations ; the others, 
less fortunate, have left on record what were the manner 
of words they said. This is the solemn act signed by all 
the members of the assembly, by which the Pope was to 
learn his doom. It is a long and furious scold from begin- 
ning to end. 

" Hildebrand, taking the name of Gregory, is the first who, without 
our knowledge, against the will of the emperor chosen by God, con- 
trary to the habit of our ancestors, contrary to the laws, has, by his 
ambition alone, invaded the papacy. He does whatever pleases him, 
right or wrong, good or evil. An apostate monk, he degrades theol- 
ogy by new doctrines and false interpretations, alters the holy books 
to suit his personal interests, mixes the sacred and profane, opens his 
ears to demons and to calumny, and makes himself at once judge, wit- 
ness, accuser, and defender. He separates husbands from wives, pre- 
fers immodest women to chaste wives, and adulterous and debauched 
and incestuous connections to legitimate unions ; he raises the people 
against their bishops and priests. He recognises those only as legally 
ordained who have begged the priesthood from his hands, or who have 
bought it from the instruments of his extortions ; he deceives the vul- 
gar by a feigned religion, fabricated in a womanish senate : it is there 
that he discusses the sacred mysteries of religion, ruins the papacy, 
and attacks at once the holy see and the empire. He is guilty of lese- 
majeste both divine and human, desiring to deprive of life and rank our 
consecrated emperor and gracious sovereign. 

" For these reasons, the emperor, the bishops, the senate, and the 
Christian people declare him deposed, and will no longer leave the 
sheep of Christ to the keeping of this devouring wolf." 

Among the papers sent to Rome this insolent act is 
repeated at greater length, accompanied by various ad- 
dresses to the bishops and people, and two letters to the 
Pope himself, from one of which, the least insolent, we 
quote a few sentences. 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 255 

" Henry, king by the grace of God, to Hildebrand. 

" While I expected from you the treatment of a father, and deferred 
to you in everything, to the great indignation of my faithful subjects, 
I have experienced on your part in return the treatment which I might 
have looked for from the most pernicious enemy of my life and kingdom. 

"First having robbed me by an insolent procedure of the hereditary 
dignity which was my right in Rome, you have gone further — you 
have attempted by detestable artifices to alienate from me the kingdom 
of Italy. Not content with this, you have put forth your hand on 
venerable bishops who are united to me as the most precious members 
of my body, and have worn them out with affronts and injustice 
against all laws human and divine. Judging that this unheard-of in- 
solence ought to be met by acts, not by words, I have called together 
a general assembly of all the greatest in my kingdom, at their own 
request, and when there had been publicly produced before them 
things hidden up to that moment, from fear or respect, their declara- 
tions have made manifest the impossibility of retaining you in the Holy 
See. Therefore adhering to their sentence, which seems to me just 
and praiseworthy before God and men, I forbid to you the jurisdiction 
of Pope which you have exercised, and I command you to come down 
from the Apostolic See of Rome, the superiority of which belongs to 
me by the gift of God, and the assent and oath of the Romans." 

The other letter ends with the following adjuration, which 
the king prefaces by quoting the words of St. Paul : " If an 
angel from heaven preach any other doctrine to yon than 
that we have preached unto you, let him be accursed " : 

"You who are struck by this curse and condemned by the judgment 
of the bishops and by our own, come down, leave the apostolic chair; 
let another assume the throne of St. Peter, not to cover violence with 
the mantle of religion, but to teach the doctrine of the blessed apostle. 
I, Henry, king by the grace of God, and all my bishops, we command 
you, come down, come down ! " 

These letters were sent to Rome by Count Eberhard, the 
same who had come to inquire into the election of Gregory 
two years before, and had confirmed and consented to it in 
the name of his master. He was himself one of the excom- 
municated barons whom Gregory had struck for simoniacal 
grants of benefices ; but he had not the courage to carry fire 
and flame into the very household of the Pope. He did, 
however, all the harm he could, publishing the contents of 
the letters he carried in the great Italian cities, where every 
guilty priest rejoiced to think that he had thus escaped the 



256 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

hands of the terrible Gregory. But when he came within 
reach of Rorne the great German baron lost heart. He found 
a substitute in a priest of Parma, a hot-headed partisan, one 
of those instruments of malice who are insensible to the 
peril of burning fuse or sudden explosion. The conspira- 
tors calculated with a sense of the dramatic which could 
scarcely have been expected from their nationality, and 
which looks more like the inspiration of the Italian himself 
— that he should arrive in Rome on the eve of the yearly 
council held in the Lateran at the beginning of Lent. This 
yearly synod was a more than usually important one ; for 
already the news of the decision at Worms was known in 
Italy, and a great number of the clergy, both small and 
great, had crowded to Rome. A hundred and ten prelates 
are reckoned as present, besides many other dignitaries. 
Among them sat, as usual on such occasions, Beatrice and 
Matilda of Tuscany, the only secular protectors of Gregory, 
the greatest and nearest of Italian sovereigns. It was their 
presence that was aimed at in the strangely abusive edict of 
Worms as making the Council a womanish senate : and it 
was also Matilda's case which was referred to in the accusa- 
tion that the Pope separated husbands from their wives. 
The excitement of expectation was in the air as all the stran- 
gers in Rome, and the people, ever stirred like the Athe- 
nians by the desire to hear some new thing, thronged the 
corridors and ante-chapels of the Lateran, the great portico 
and square which were for the moment the centre of Rome. 
Again the vast basilica, the rustling mediaeval crowd in all 
its glow of colour and picturesqueness of grouping, rises 
before us. Few scenes more startling and dramatic have 
ever occurred even in that place of many histories. 

The Pope had seated himself in the chair of St. Peter, the 
long half-circular line of the great prelates extending down 
the long basilica on either side, the princes in a tribune 
apart with their attendants, and the crowd of priests filling 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 257 

up every corner and crevice : the Veni Creator had been 
sung: and the proceedings were about to begin — when 
Roland of Parma was introduced, no doubt with much cour- 
tesy and ceremony, as the bearer of letters from the Emperor. 
When these letters were taken from him, however, the envoy, 
instead of withdrawing, as became him, stood still at the 
foot of the Pope's chair, and to the consternation, as may 
be supposed, of the assembly, addressed Gregory. "The 
king, my master," he cried, " and all the bishops, foreign 
and Italian, command you to quit instantly the Church of 
Rome, and the chair of Peter." Then turning quickly to 
the astonished assembly, " My brethren," he cried, " you are 
hereby warned to appear at Pentecost in the presence of the 
king to receive your Pope from him; for this is no Pope 
but a devouring wolf." 

The intensity of the surprise alone can account for the 
possibility of the most rapid speaker delivering himself of 
so many words before the assembly rose upon him to shut 
his insolent mouth. The Bishop of Porto was the first to 
spring up, to cry " Seize him ! " but no doubt a hundred 
hands were at his throat before the Praetorian guard, with 
their naked swords making a keen line of steel through the 
shadows of the crowded basilica, now full of shouts and 
tumult, came in from the gates. The wretch threw himself 
at the feet of the Pope whom he had that moment insulted, 
and who seems to have come down hurriedly to rescue 
him from the fury of the crowd: and was with difficulty 
placed under the protection of the soldiers. It is not diffi- 
cult to imagine the supreme excitement which must have 
filled the church as they disappeared with their prisoner, 
and the agitated assembly turned again towards their head, 
the insulted pontiff. Gregory was not the man to fail in 
such an emergency. He entreated the assembly to retain 
its composure and calm. " My children," he said, " let not 
the peace of the Church be broken by you. Perilous times, 



258 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME [chap. 

the gospel itself tells us, shall come : times in which men 
shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, diso- 
bedient to parents. It must needs be that offences come, 
and the Lord has sent us as sheep into the midst of wolves. 
We have long lived in peace, but it may be that God would 
now water his growing corn with the blood of martyrs. 
We behold the devil's force at length displaying itself 
against us in the open field. Now, therefore, as it behoves 
the disciples of Christ with hands trained to the war, let us 
meet him and bravely contend with him until the holy 
faith which through his practices appears to be throughout 
the world abandoned and despised shall, the Lord fighting 
through us, be restored." 

It seems a strange descent from the dignity of this address, 
that the Pope should have gone on to comment upon a 
marvellous egg which it was said had been found near the 
church of St. Peter, with a strange design raised upon its 
surface — a buckler with the figure of a serpent underneath, 
struggling with bent head and wriggling body to get free. 
This had seemed, however, a wonderful portent to all Kome, 
and though his modern historians censure Gregory for hav- 
ing no doubt prepared the prodigy and taken a despicable 
advantage of it, there does not seem the slightest reason to 
suppose either that Gregory was guilty of this, or that he 
was so little a man of his time as not to be himself as much 
impressed by it as any one else there. Appearances of the 
kind, which an age on the lookout for portents can define, 
and make others see, are not wanting in any period. The 
crowd responded with cries that it was he, the father of the 
Church, who was supreme, and that the blasphemer should 
be cut off from the Church and from his throne. 

The sensation was not lessened when the full text 1 of 

1 On this subject the records differ, some asserting these letters to 
have been read at once on Roland's removal, some that the sitting was 
adjourned after that wonderful incident. 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 259 

Henry's letters, parts of which we have already quoted, was 
read out to the reassembled council next clay. The words 
which named their Pope — their head who had been the 
providence and the guide of Rome for so many years — 
with contemptuous abuse as "the monk Hildebrand, " must 
have stirred that assembly to its depths. The council with 
one voice demanded from Gregory the excommunication of 
the Emperor, and of the impious bishops, false to every 
vow, who had ventured to launch an anathema against the 
lawful head of the Church. The solemn sentence of excom- 
munication was accordingly pronounced against Henry : his 
subjects were freed from their oath of allegiance, and his 
soul cut off from the Church which he had attempted to 
rend in twain. Excommunications had become so common 
in these days that the awe of the extraordinary ceremonial 
was much lessened: but it was no mere spiritual depriva- 
tion, as all were aware, but the most tremendous sentence 
which could be launched against a man not yet assured in 
his victories over his own rebellious tributaries, and whose 
throne depended upon the fidelity of powerful vassals, many 
of whom were much more impressed by the attitude of the 
Pope than by that of the king. 

Thus after so many preliminaries, treaties of peace and 
declarations of war, the great conflict between Pope and 
Emperor, between the Church and the State, began. The 
long feud which ran into every local channel, and rent 
every mediaeval town asunder with the struggles of Guelfs 
and Ghibellines, thus originated amid events that shook 
the world. The Synod of Worms and the Council of Eome, 
with their sudden and extraordinary climax in the confer- 
ence of Canossa, formed the first act in a drama played 
upon a larger stage and with more remarkable accompani- 
ments than almost any other in the world. 

The effect of Henry's excommunication was extraordinary. 
The world of Christendom, looking on beyond the sphere .of 



260 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

Henry's immediate surroundings and partisans, evidently 
felt with, an impulse almost unanimous that the anathema 
launched by a partly lay assembly and a secular King against 
a reigning Pope unassailable in virtue, a man of power and 
genius equal to his position, was a sort of grim jest, the 
issue of which was to be watched for with much excitement, 
but not much doubt as to the result, the horror of the pro- 
fanity being the gravest point in the matter. But no one 
doubted the power of Gregory on his part, amid his lawful 
council, to excommunicate and cut off from the Church the 
offending king. Already, before the facts were known, 
many bishops and other ecclesiastics in Germany had sent 
timid protests against the act to which in some cases they 
had been forced to append their names: and the public 
opinion of the world, if such an expression can be used, 
was undoubtedly on Gregory's side. Henry's triumphant 
career came to a pause. Not only the judgment of the 
Church and the opinion of his peers, but the powers of 
Heaven seemed to be against him,, One of his greatest 
allies and supporters, Gottfried, surnamed II Gobbo, the 
son of that Gottfried of Lorraine who married Beatrice of 
Tuscany, and who had imposed his hunchback son as her 
husband upon the young Matilda, the daughter of Bea- 
trice — was murdered immediately after. The Bishop of 
Utrecht, who had been one of the king's chief advisers 
and confidants in his war with Gregory, died in misery 
and despair, declaring with his last breath that he saw his 
bed surrounded by demons, and that it was useless to offer 
prayers for him. On the other hand, the great Dukes of 
Suabia, Bavaria, and Carinthia, all faithful to the Church, 
abandoned the excommunicated king. Some of the greater 
bishops, trembling before the just ire of the Pope whom 
they had bearded, took the same part. The half -assuaged 
rebellion of the Saxon provinces broke forth with greater 
force than ever. Henry had neither arms nor supporters left 



m.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 261 

to secure further victories, and the very air of the empire 
was full of the letters of Gregory, in which all his attempts 
to win the young king to better ways, and all the insults 
which that king had poured forth against the Holy See, were 
set forth. The punishment, as it appeared on all sides, was 
prompt as thunderbolts from heaven to follow the offence. 

While Henry hesitated in dismay and alarm, not know- 
ing what step to take, seeing his friends, both lay and 
clerical, abandon him on every side, consequences more 
decisive still followed. The great princes met together in 
an assembly of their own in Ulm without any reference to 
Henry, whom they named in their proceedings the ex-king, 
and decided upon another more formal meeting later to 
choose a new sovereign. These potentates became doiibly 
religious, doubly Catholic, in their sudden revulsion. They 
surrounded Gregory's legates with reverence, they avoided 
all communion with simoniacal prelates, and even — car- 
rying the Pope's new influence to the furthest extent — 
with the married priests against whom he had long fulmi- 
nated in vain. A reformation of all evils seemed to be 
about to follow. They formally condemned the excommuni- 
cated Henry on every point moral and political, and though 
they hesitated over the great step of the threatened election 
of a king in his place, they announced to him that unless 
he could clear himself of the interdict before the beginning 
of the following year, when they had decided to call a diet 
in Augsburg to settle the question, his fall would be com- 
plete and without remedy. At the same time they formally 
and solemnly invited the presence of the Pope at Augsburg 
to preside over and confirm their conclusions. This invita- 
tion Gregory accepted at once, and Henry, with no alterna- 
tive before him, consented also to appear before the tribunal 
of his subjects, and to receive from their hands, and those 
of the Pope whom he had so insulted and outraged, the 
sentence of his fate. His humiliation was complete. 



262 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

The assembly which was to make this tremendous decision 
was convoked for the 2nd February, 1077, the feast of the 
Purification, at Augsburg. Gregory had accepted the invi- 
tation of the German potentates without fear; but there 
was much alarm in Rome at the thought of such a journey 
— of the passage through rebellious Lombardy, of the 
terrible Alps and their dangers, and at the end of all the 
fierce German princes, who did not always keep faith, and 
whose minds before this time might have turned again 
towards their native prince. The Pope set out, however, 
under the guard of Matilda of Tuscany and her army, to 
meet the escort promised him from beyond the Alps. On 
the other hand, Henry was surrounded by dangers on every 
side. He had been compelled to give up his own special 
friends, excommunicated like himself; he had no arms, no 
troops, no money; the term which had been allowed him to 
make his peace with the Pope was fast passing, and the 
dreadful moment when it would be his fate to stand before 
his revolted subjects and learn their decision, appeared 
before him in all its humiliation and dishonour. Already 
various offenders had stolen across the mountains privately, 
to make their submission to Gregory. It seemed the only 
course for the desperate king to take. At length, after 
much wavering, he made up his mind, and escaping like a 
fugitive from the town of Spires to which he had retired, 
he made his way in the midst of a rigorous winter, and 
with incredible difficulty, across the Alps, with the help 
and under the guardianship of Adelaide of Susa, his mother- 
in-law, who, however, it is said, made him pay a high price 
for her help. He had begged of the Pope to give him 
audience at Rome, but this was refused: and in partial 
despair and confusion he set out to accomplish his hated 
mission somehow, he did not know where or by what means. 
A gleam of comfort, however, came to Henry on his travels. 
He was received with open arms in Lombardy where the 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 263 

revolted bishops eagerly welcomed him as their deliverer 
from Gregory and his austerities : but there was too much 
at stake for such an easy solution of the matter as this. 

In the meantime Gregory travelled northwards surrounded 
by all the strength of Tuscany, accompanied by the brill- 
iant and devoted Matilda, a daughter in love and in years, 
the pupil and youthful friend, no doubt the favourite and 
beloved companion, of a man whose age and profession and 
character alike would seem to have made any other idea 
impossible even to the slanderers of the middle ages. 
Matilda of Tuscany has had a great fate : not only was she 
the idol of her own people and the admired of her own age 
— such an impossible and absurd piece of slander as that 
which linked the name of a beautiful young woman with 
that of the austere and aged Gregory being apparently the 
only one which had ever been breathed against her : — but 
the great poets of her country have placed her, one in the 
sweeter aspect of a ministering angel of heaven, the other 
in that of the most heroic of feminine warriors, on the 
heights of poetic fame. Matilda on the banks of that sacred 
river of Lethe where all that is unhappy is forgotten, who 
is but one degree less sacred to Dante than his own Beatrice 
in Paradise: and Clorinda, the warrior maiden of Tasso, 
have carried the image of this noble princess to the hearts 
of many an after age. The hunchback husband imposed 
upon her in her extreme youth, the close union between her 
and her mother Beatrice, the independent court held by 
these two ladies, their prominent place among all the great 
minds of their time — and not least the faithful friendship 
of both with the great Gregory, combine to make this young 
princess one of the most interesting figures of her day„ 
The usual solaces of life had been cut off from her at the 
beginning by her loveless marriage. She had no children. 
She was at this period of her career alone in the world, 
her mother having recently died, following II Gobbo very 



264 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

closely to the grave. Henceforward Matilda had more to 
do in the field and council chamber than with the ordinary 
delights of life. 

The Pope had left Rome with many anxieties on his 
mind, fully appreciating the dangers of the journey before 
him, and not knowing if he might ever see the beloved city 
again. While he was on the way the news reached him 
that Henry, whom he had refused to receive in Rome, was 
on his way across the Alps, and as probably the details of 
that painful journey were unknown, and the first idea would 
be that the king was coming with an army in full force — 
still greater anxieties, if not alarms, must have been awak- 
ened among the Pope's supporters. It was still more alarm- 
ing to find that the German escort which was to have met 
him at Mantua had not been sent, the hearts of the princes 
having failed them, and their plans having fallen into con- 
fusion at the news of the king's escape. Henry had been 
received with enthusiasm in Lombardy, always rebellious, 
and might make his appearance any day to overpower the 
chivalry of Tuscany, and put the lives of both Pope and 
Princess in danger. They were on the road to Mantua 
when this news reached them, and in the anxious council 
of war immediately held, it was resolved that the strong 
castle of Canossa, supposed to be impregnable, should be, 
for the moment at least, the Pope's shelter and resting- 
place. One of the great strongholds of Italy, built like so 
many on a formidable point of rock, of itself almost inac- 
cessible, and surrounded by three lines of fortified walls, 
among which no doubt clustered the rude little dwellings 
of a host of retainers — the situation of this formidable 
place was one which promised complete protection : and the 
name of the Tuscan castle has since become one of the best- 
known names in history, as the incident which followed 
contains some of the most picturesque and remarkable 
scenes on record. The castle had already a romantic story; 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 265 

it had sheltered many a fugitive; forlorn princesses had 
taken refuge within its walls from the pursuit of suitors or 
of enemies, the one as dangerous as the other. Painfully 
carried up in his litter by those steep and dangerous ways, 
from one narrow platform of the cliff to another, with the 
great stretch of the landscape ever widening as he gained 
a higher point, and the vast vault of heaven rounding to a 
vaster horizon, the Pope gained this eyrie of safety, this 
eagle's nest among the clouds. 

We hear of no luxuries, not even those of intellectual 
and spiritual discourse, which to many an ascetic have 
represented, and represented well, the happiness of life, in 
this retreat of Gregory with his beautiful hostess, amid 
his and her friends. By his side, indeed, was Hugo, Abbot 
of Cluny, one of his most cherished and life-long compan- 
ions; but the Pope spent his days of seclusion in prayer 
and anxious thought. The great plain that lay at his feet, 
should it be deluged with Christian blood once more, should 
brother stand against brother in arms, and Italy be crushed 
under the remorseless foot which even the more patient 
Teuton had not been able to bear ? Many melancholy 
thoughts were no doubt in Gregory's mind in that great 
fastness surrounded by all the ramparts of nature and of 
art. He had dreamed — before the name of Crusade had 
yet been heard or thought of — of an expedition to Jeru- 
salem at the head of all who loved the Lord, himself in his 
age and weakness the leader of an army composed of valiant 
and generous hearts from every quarter of the world, to 
redeem the Sepulchre of the Lord, and crush the rising 
power of the Saracens. This had been the favourite imagi- 
nation of his mind — though as yet it called forth little 
sympathy from those about him — for some years past. 
Instead of that noble expedition was it possible that, per- 
haps partly by his fault, Christians were about to fly at each 
other's throats and the world to be again torn asunder by 



266 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

intestine warfare ? But such thoughts as these were not 
the thoughts of the eleventh century. Gregory might shed 
tears before his God at the thought of bloodshed : but that 
his position in the presence of the Highest was the only 
right one, and his opponent's that of the most dangerous 
wrong, was no doubt his assured conviction. He awaited 
the progress of events, knowing as little as the humblest 
man-at-arms what was going to happen, with a troubled 
heart. 

Nevertheless the retirement of these first days was broken 
by many hurried arrivals which were more or less of good 
omen. One by one the proud German bishops specially 
designated in Gregory's acts of excommunication, and 
nobles more haughty still, under the same burden, climbed 
the steep paths of Canossa, and penetrated from gate to 
gate, barefooted pilgrims denuding themselves of every 
vestige of power. "Cursed be he who turns back his 
sword from the blood," that is, who weakly pauses in the 
execution of a divine sentence — was one of Gregory's 
maxims. He received these successive suppliants with 
more sternness than sweetness. "Mercy," he said, "can 
never be refused to those who acknowledge and deplore 
their sins ; but long disobedience, like rust on a sword, can 
be burned out only by the fire of a long repentance ; " and 
he sent them one by one to solitary chambers in which, 
with the sparest of nourishment, they might reflect upon 
their sins. After a sufficient seclusion, however, they 
were liberated and sent away, reprimanded yet blessed — 
at least the laymen among them. It remained now to see 
what Henry would do. 

Henry was no longer at the lowest ebb of his fortunes. 
The princes of Germany had come to a pause : they had not 
sent the promised escort for the Pope ; they were irresolute, 
not knowing what step to take next : and all Lombardy had 
risen to welcome the king; he had the support of every 




s 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 269 

schismatic bishop, every censured priest, and of the excited 
people who were hostile to the pretensions of Rome, or 
rather to the severe purity of Gregory which was so uncom- 
promising and determined. But by some unaccountable 
check upon his high spirit Henry, for the moment, was not 
moved to further rebellion either by the support of a Lom- 
bard army at his back, or by the hopes of his reviving fol- 
lowers at home. He was accompanied by his wife and by 
her mother, Adelaide of Susa, and perhaps the veneration 
of the women for the authority of the Church and dread of 
its penalties, affected him, although he had no love for the 
wife of whom he had tried so hard to get rid. Whatever was 
the explanation it is very evident, at least, that his spirit 
was cowed and that he saw nothing before him but submis- 
sion. He went on probably to Parma, with a small and 
unarmed retinue, leaving his turbulent Lombard followers 
behind. On the way he sent various messengers before 
him, asking for an interview with Matilda, who was sup- 
posed likely to move the Pope in his favour. We are not 
told where the meeting took place, but probably it was in 
some wondering village at the foot of the hill, where the 
princely train from the castle, the great Contessa, the still 
greater abbot, Hugo of Cluny, and " many of the principal 
Italian princes," met the wandering pilgrim party, without 
sign or evidence of royalty — Henry and his Queen, the 
Marchesa Adelaide of Este, her son Amadeo, and other 
great persons in the same disguise of humility. The ladies 
on either side were related to each other, and all belonged 
to that close circle of the reigning class, in which every 
man calls his neighbour brother or cousin. Hugo of Cluny 
was the godfather of the king and loved him, and Adelaide, 
though on the side of her son-in-law, and now his eager 
champion, was a true and faithful daughter of the Church. 
Henry declared on the other side to his anxious friends 
that the accusations of the Germans were not true, that he 



270 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

was not as they had painted him : and implored their inter- 
cession with the Pope, not for any temporal advantage, but 
solely to be delivered from the anathema which weighed 
upon his soul. And Matilda and the others were but too 
anxious to make peace and put faith in all he said. 

It is very likely that Gregory believed none of these pro- 
testations, but now or never, certainly he was bound to fulfil 
his own maxim, and not to turn back his sword from the 
blood. All the arguments of Henry's friends could not 
induce him to grant an easy absolution at the king's first 
word. Finally he consented to receive him as a penitent, but 
in no other character. Probably it was while the prayers 
and entreaties of Matilda and of Abbot Hugo were still 
going on in the castle that Henry came day by day, bare- 
footed, in a humble tunic of woollen cloth, and waited at the 
gates to know the result. It was "an atrocious winter," 
such as had never been seen before, with continual snow- 
storms, and the rugged paths and stairs up the cliff, never 
easy, were coated with frost. Twice over the king climbed 
with naked feet as far as the second circle of the walls, but 
only to be turned away. It seems little short of a miracle 
that such a man, in such circumstances, should have so per- 
severed. On the third day the pleaders within had been 
successful, and Henry was admitted, on the generous guar- 
antee of Matilda, who took upon her to answer for him that 
his repentance was genuine. At last the culprit was led 
into the Pope's presence. He was made to give various 
promises of amendment, which were accepted, not on his 
oath, a last and supreme humiliation, but on the undertak- 
ing of various of his friends who swore, rashly one cannot 
but think, on the relics of the saints that the king would 
keep his promises. This is the document to which these 
generous friends set their seals. 

"I, Henry, King, in respect to the complaints of the archbishops, 
bishops, dukes, counts and other princes of the Teutonic kingdom, and 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 271 

of all those who follow them, within the time fixed by the Lord Pope 
will do justice according to his sentence, or make peace according to 
his advice if no unavoidable hindrance occurs ; and in that case, the 
moment the hindrance is taken away I will be ready to fulfil my 
promise. In addition, if the Lord Pope Gregory desires to cross the 
Alps, or go into other countries, he shall be held safe on my part, and 
on the part of those whom I command, from all danger of death, mu- 
tilation, or captivity, himself and those who form his escort, both dur- 
ing the journey, as long as he remains, and on the return ; nothing 
shall be done by me contrary to his dignity, and if anything is done by 
others, I will lend him my help in good faith according to my power." 

This does not seem a very large bond. 

Next day, the 25th January, 1077, Henry came again in 
the same penitential dress, but this time according to formal 
appointment. He came into the room where the Pope 
awaited him, followed by all the excommunicated princes 
in his train, barefooted and half frozen with the painful 
climb up the rocky paths ; and throwing himself on the 
floor before Gregory, asked his pardon, which Gregory gave, 
shedding many tears over the penitents. They were then 
received back into the Church with all the due ceremonials, 
the Pope in his vestments, the penitents naked to the waist, 
despoiled of all ornaments and dignities. In the castle 
church, of which now nothing but the foundations remain, 
Gregory solemnly absolved the miserable party, and offered 
them the Communion. At this act a very strange scene took 
place. The Pope, the great assailant of Simony, had him- 
self been accused of it, ridiculous as was the accusation in 
a case like his, of which every circumstance was so perfectly 
known, and formally by Henry himself in the insolent com- 
mand already quoted to abandon the papal see. At the 
moment of communion, in the most solemn part of the service, 
the. Pope turned to Henry, standing before the altar, with 
the host in his hands. He appealed to God in the most im- 
pressive manner according to the usage of the time. 

"You have long and often accused me," said the Pope, 
"of having usurped the Apostolical chair by Simony. . . . 
I now hold the body of the Saviour in my hands, which I am 



272 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

about to take. Let Him be the witness of my innocence : 
let God Himself all powerful absolve me to-clay of the crime 
imputed to me if I am innocent, or strike me with sudden 
death if I am guilty." Then after a solemn pause he added : 
" My son, do as I have done : if you are certain of your in- 
nocence, if your reputation is falsely attacked by the lies of 
your rivals, deliver the Church of God from a scandal and 
yourself from suspicion ; take the body of Our Lord, that 
your innocence may have God for witness, that the mouth 
of your enemies may be stopped, and that I — henceforward, 
your advocate and the most faithful defender of your 
cause — may reconcile you with your nobles, give you back 
your kingdom, and that the tempest of civil war which has 
so long afflicted the State may henceforth be laid at rest." 

Would a guilty king in these unbelieving days venture 
upon such a pledge ? Henry at least was incapable of it. 
He dared not call God to witness against the truth, and re- 
fused, trembling, murmuring confused excuses to take this 
supreme test. The mass was accomplished without the 
communion of the king ; but not the less he was absolved 
and the anathema taken from his head. 

In a letter written immediately after, Gregory informed 
the German princes of what he had done, adding that he 
still desired to cross the Alps and assist them in the settle- 
ment of the great question remaining, Henry having been 
avowedly received by him as a penitent, but not in any way 
as a restored king. 

This great historical event, which has been the subject 
of so much commentary and discussion, and has been sup- 
posed to mark so great a step in the power and pretensions 
of the Popes, was in fact without any immediate effect in 
history. Henry went forth wroth and sore, humiliated but 
not humbled, and thinking of nothing so much as how to 
return to Gregory the shame he had himself suffered. And 
Gregory remained in his stronghold as little convinced of 



m.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 273 

any advantage attained, as he had been of Henry's repent- 
ance. He is said to have answered the Saxon envoys who 
reproached him with his leniency, by a grim reassurance 
which is almost cynical. "He goes back worse than he 
came," said the Pope. It was indeed impossible that the 
eye of a man so conversant with men as Gregory should not 
have perceived how entirely his penitent's action was diplo- 
matic and assumed for a purpose, and what a solemn farce 
Henry was playing as he stood barefooted in the snow, to 
obtain the absolution which was his only chance for Ger- 
many. It is perfectly permissible to believe that not only 
the determination not "to turn back his sword from the 
blood " or to fail in exacting every punctilio of penance, 
but a natural impulse of scorn for the histrionic exhibition 
made for the benefit of the great audience across the Alps, 
induced the Pope to keep the king dangling at those icy 
gates. That there should have been in Gregory's mind, 
along with this conviction, momentary relentings of hope 
that the penitent's heart might really be touched, was 
etpially natural, and that it was one of these sudden 
impulses which moved him to the startling and solemn 
appeal to God over the sacramental host which formed so 
remarkable an incident in the ceremonial, may be taken for 
granted. In that age miracles were more than common, 
they were looked for and expected; and in all ages the 
miracle which we call conversion, the sudden and inex- 
plainable movement of a heart, touched and turned in an 
instant from evil to good, has been known and proved. 
That a priest at the altar should hope that it might be his, 
by some burning word or act, to convey that inexpressible 
touch was a very human and natural hope : and yet Greg- 
ory knew well in his after survey of what had passed that 
the false penitent went away worse than he came. He 
wrote, however, an account of the matter to the German 
princes, who looked on trembling for the consequences, and 



274 THE MAKERS OF MODERN" ROME. [chap. 

probably blaming the Pope for an action that might destroy 
all their combinations — in which he described to them 
Henry's penitence and promise, without implying a doubt 
of the sincerity of either, but with a full statement of the 
fact that the absolution awarded to the man made no dif- 
ference in respect to the king. 

"Things being thns arranged [writes the Pope] in order to secure, 
by the help of God, the peace of the Church and the union of the 
Kingdom, which we have so long desired, we are anxious to pursue our 
journey into your countries on the first occasion possible ; for we de- 
sire you to know, as you may perceive from the written engagements, 
that everything is still in suspense, so that our arrival among you and 
the unanimity of your council is absolutely necessary to settle matters. 
Therefore be very attentive to continue as you have begun in faith and 
the love of justice, and understand that we have done nothing for the 
king, except to tell him that he might trust to us to help him in such 
things as may touch his salvation and his honour, with justice and with 
mercy, without putting our soul and his in peril. ' ' 

In the meantime Henry had enough to do in winning back 
again to his side the rebellious Lombards, who considered 
his submission to the Pope, however artificial, a desertion 
of their cause, and shut upon him the gates of their cities, 
which before his visit to Canossa had been thrown wide 
open. He had apparently, though only for a moment, lost 
them, while he had not regained the sympathies of Ger- 
many. There was nothing for it but a new apostasy, throw- 
ing over of his promises, and reassumption of the leadership 
of the schismatic party, which made the position of Greg- 
ory, surrounded by that angry sea of Lombard rebellion 
which beat against the base of his rocky stronghold, a very 
dangerous one. Through the whole spring of 1077 the 
Pope was more or less confined to the Castle of Canossa or 
other similar fortresses, under the vigilant care of Matilda; 
and it was from these strong places that he wrote a succes- 
sion of remarkable letters to the nobles of Germany, who, 
strongly set upon the Diet in which the affairs of the king- 
dom were to be placed on a permanent footing, were pro- 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 275 

ceeding to carry out their intention without waiting either 
for the presence of Gregory which they had invited, or 
Henry whose interests were at stake. Gregory did every- 
thing that was possible to delay the Diet until he could be 
present at it. He was anxious also to delay whatever great 
step might be in contemplation until the mind of the coun- 
try was a little less anxious and disturbed : and he desired 
to be present, not only in the position of Arbitrator, but 
also to moderate with his counsels the excited spirits, and 
prevent if possible any great catastrophe. 

We may allow, as it is one of the conventionalities of 
history to assert, that Gregory's intention was to establish 
in such matters the jurisdiction of the Popes and make it 
apparent to the world that thrones and principalities were 
at the disposition of the Church. But at the same time 
Gregory was, like all men, chiefly moved by the immediate 
question before him, and he was a man sincerely occupied 
with what was best for both Church and State, fearing the 
rashness of an angry and excited assembly, and remember- 
ing his promise to do what he could for his most unworthy 
penitent ; and we see no reason to believe that his purposes 
were not, according to his perception of his duty, honest 
and noble. He retained his hope of proceeding to Germany 
as long as that was possible, asking again and again for the 
guide and escort promised, even asking from Henry a safe 
conduct through the territory now held by him. Even 
after the election at Forchheim of Rudolf of Suabia as 
king in the place of Henry, he continued to urge upon the 
legates whom he had sent to that assembly the necessity 
for his presence. And he undoubtedly did this on the 
highest ground possible, putting forth his right to judge 
in the matter in the very clearest words. He bids his mes- 
sengers in the name of St. Peter to summon the heads of 
both parties, Henry and Eudolf, to make his journey pos- 
sible. 



276 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

" With the advice of the clergy and laymen fearing God, we desire 
to judge between the two kings, by the grace of God, and point out 
which of the two parties is most justly to be entrusted with the gov- 
ernment of the State. You are aware that it is our duty, and that it 
appertains to the providential wisdom of the Apostolic See, to judge 
the governments of the great Christian kingdoms and to regulate them 
under the inspiration of justice. The question between these two 
princes is so grave, and the consequences may be so dangerous, that if 
it was for any reason neglected by lis, it would bring not only upon us 
and upon them, but on the Church entire, great and lamentable mis- 
fortune. Therefore, if one or other of these kings refuses to yield to 
our decision and conform to our counsels, and if, lighting the torch of 
pride and human covetousness against the honour of God, he aspires 
in his fury to the desolation of the Roman Empire, resist him in every 
way, by every means, to the death if necessary, in our name and by 
the authority of the blessed Peter." 

The Pope in another letter makes his appeal no longer to 
the ruling class but to the entire people. He informs "all 
the faithful of Christ in the Teutonic empire " that he has 
sent his legates to both kings to demand of them both 
" either in their own persons or by sufficient messengers " 
to open the way for his journey to Germany in order with 
the help of God to judge the question between them. 

' ' Our heart is full of sadness and sorrow to think that for the pride 
of one man so many thousands of Christians may be delivered over to 
death both temporal and eternal, the Christian religion shaken to its 
foundations, and the Roman Empire precipitated into ruin. Both of 
these kings seek aid from us, or rather from the Apostolic See, which 
we occupy, though unworthy ; and we, trusting in the mercy of 
Almighty God, and the help of the blessed Peter, with the aid of your 
advice, you who fear God and love the Church, are ready to examine 
with care the right on either side and to help him whom justice noto- 
riously calls to the administration of the kingdom. . . . 

" You know, dear brethren, that since our departure from Rome we 
have lived in the midst of dangers among the enemies of the faith ; but 
neither from fear nor from love have we promised any help, but justice 
to one or other of these kings. "We prefer to die, if necessary, rather 
than to consent by our own will that the Church of God should be put 
from her place ; for we know that we have been ordained and set upon 
the apostolic chair in order to seek in our life not our own interests but 
those of Christ, and to follow through a thousand labours in the steps 
of the fathers to the future and eternal repose, by the mercy of God." 

The reader must remember that Gregory had very good 
reason for all that he said, and that irrespective of the 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 277 

claims of the Church a wise and impartial umpire at such 
a moment might have been of the last importance to Ger- 
many; also that his services had been asked for in this 
capacity, and that therefore he had a right to insist upon 
being heard. The position which he claimed had been 
offered to him; and he was entitled to ask that such an 
important matter should not be settled in his absence. 

The remonstrances which the Pope continued to make by 
his own voice and those of his legates as long as any remon- 
strance was possible, were however regarded by neither 
party. Neither the authority of Kome nor the visible wis- 
dom of settling a question which must convulse the world 
and tear Germany in pieces, peacefully and on the founda- 
tion of justice if that were possible, as urged by Gregory 
— could prevail, nor ever has prevailed on any similar 
occasion against the passions and ambitions of men. It 
was a devout imagination, appealing to certain minds here 
and there by the highest motives, and naturally by very 
different ones to all the interested souls likely to be advan- 
taged by it, which always form the reverse of the medal; 
but men with arms in their hands and all the excitements 
of faction and party, of imperial loss and gain around them, 
were little like to await a severe and impartial judgment. 
The German bishops made a curious remonstrance in their 
turn against the reception by Gregory of Henry's profes- 
sions of penitence, and on either side there was a band of 
ecclesiastics, presumably not all good or all bad perplexing 
every judgment. 

We have fortunately nothing to do with the bloody 
struggles of Rudolf and Henry. When the latter made his 
way again over the Alps, to defend his rights, carrying 
with him the Iron Crown which Gregory's refusal had pre- 
vented him from assuming — he carried it away however, 
though he did not dare to put it on, a curious mixture of 
timidity and furtive daring — the Pope, up to that moment 



278 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

virtually confined within the circle of the mountain strong- 
holds of Tuscany, returned to Borne: where he continued 
to be assailed by constant and repeated entreaties to take 
up one or the other side, his own council of the Lateran 
inclining towards Henry. But nothing moved him from 
his determination that this question should be decided by 
a Diet under his own presidence, and by that alone. This 
question runs through the entire story of the period from 
year to year. No council — and in addition to the usual 
yearly council held always in the beginning of Lent, at the 
Lateran, there seem to have been various others between 
whiles, made compulsory by the agitation of the time — 
could take place without the arrival of the two bands of 
German ambassadors, one from Henry and the other from 
Budolf, to plead the cause of their respective masters, both 
professing all obedience, and inviting a decision in their 
favour by every argument : but neither taking a single step 
to bring about the one thing which the Bope demanded — a 
lawful assembly to settle the question. 

There is no pretence that Gregory treated them with any- 
thing but the severest impartiality, or that he at any time 
departed from the condition he had proposed from the first 
— the only preference given to one above the other being 
that he is said to have sent his apostolical blessing to 
Budolf, a virtuous prince and his friend, and not to Henry 
the apostate and false penitent, which is scarcely wonder- 
ful. But it is easy to understand the agitation in which the 
constant arrival of these ambassadors must have kept Borne, 
a city so prone to agitation, and with so many parties within 
its own walls, seditious nobles and undisciplined priests, 
and the ever-restless, ever-factious populace, struggling 
continually for some new thing. The envoys of Henry 
would seem to have had more or less the popular favour : 
they were probably a more showy band than the heavier 
Saxons : and Henry's name and the prestige of his great 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 279 

father, and all those royal shows which must still have 
been remembered in the city, the coronation of the former 
Henry in St. Peter's, and all its attendant ceremonials and 
expenses, must have attached a certain interest to his name. 
Agnes too, the empress, who had died so recently in the 
odour of sanctity among them, must have left behind her, 
whether she loved him or not, a certain prepossession in 
favour of her son. And the crowd took sides no doubt, and 
in its crushing and pressing to see the strangers, in the 
great Lateran square or by the gates of their lodging, 
formed itself into parties attracted by a glance or a smile, 
made into enemies by a hasty word, and preparing for the 
greater troubles and conflicts which were about to come. 

In the midst of these continual arrivals and departures 
and while the trumpets of the Saxon or the German party 
were still tingling in the air, and the velvet and jewels of 
the ambassadors had scarcely ceased to gleam among the 
dark robes of the clergy, there came up other matters of a 
nature more suitable to the sacred courts and the interests 
of the Church. Berengarius of Tours, a mild and specu- 
lative thinker, as often convincing himself that he was 
wrong as proving himself to be right, appeared before the 
council of 1079 to answer for certain heresies respecting 
the Eucharist, of which there had often already been ques- 
tion. His opinions were those of Luther, of whom he is 
constantly called the precursor: but there was little of 
Luther's strength in this gentle heretic, who had already 
recanted publicly, and then resumed his peculiar teachings, 
with a simplicity that for a time disarmed criticism. Greg- 
ory had always been his friend and protector, tolerating if 
not sharing his opinions, which were not such as moved or 
interested deeply the Church at the moment : for the age 
was not heretical, and the example of such a candid offender, 
who did not attempt to resist the arguments brought against 
him, was rather edifying than otherwise. At least there 



280 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

were no theological arguments of fire and sword, no rack or 
stake for the heretic in Gregory's day. The pressure of 
theological judgment, however, became too strong for the 
Pope to resist, preoccupied as he was with other matters, 
and Berengarius was once more compelled to recant, which 
he did cordially, with the same result as before. 

It was a more congenial occupation for the vigilant head 
of the Church to watch over the extension of the faith than 
to promote the internal discipline of the fold of Christ by 
prosecutions for heresy. His gaze penetrated the mists of 
the far north, and we find Gregory forestalling (as indeed 
his great predecessor the first Gregory had done before him) 
the missionaries of our own day in the expedient of train- 
ing young natives to preach the faith among their country- 
men, over which there was much modern rejoicing when it 
was first adopted in recent days, as an entirely new and 
altogether wise thing. Gregory the Great had already 
practised it with his Anglo-Saxon boys: and Gregory VII. 
recommended it to Olaf, king of Norway, to whom he wrote 
that he would fain have sent a sufficient number of priests 
to his distant country: "But as this is very difficult because 
of the great distance and difference of language, we pray you, 
as we have also asked from the king of Denmark, to send 
to our apostolical court some young nobles of your country 
in order that being nourished with care in divine knowledge 
under the wings of St. Peter and St. Paul, they may carry 
back to you the counsels of the Apostolical See, arriving 
among you, not as men unknown, but as brothers — and 
preaching to you the duties of Christianity, not as strangers 
and ignorant, but as men whose language is yours, and who 
are yet trained and powerful in knowledge and morals." 
Thus, while the toils were gathering round his feet at home, 
and the most ancient centre of Christianity was ready to 
cast him out as a fugitive, the great Pope was extending the 
invisible links of Christian fealty to the ends of the earth. 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 281 

It was in the year 1080, three years after the events of 
Canossa, that the next step was taken by Gregory. In that 
long interval he had never ceased to insist npon the only 
lawful mode of settling the quarrel, i.e., the assembly in 
Germany of all the persons most concerned, to take the 
whole matter into solemn consideration and come to a per- 
manent conclusion upon grounds more solid than the appeal 
to arms which ravaged the empire, and which, constantly 
fluctuating, gave the temporary victory now to one side, 
now to the other. The age was far from being ripe for any 
such expedient as arbitration, and the ordeal of arms was 
its most natural method : yet.the proposal had proceeded in 
the first place from the Teutonic princes themselves, and it 
was entirely in accordance with German laws and primitive 
procedure. And except the Pope, or some other great 
churchman, there was no possible president of such a Diet, 
or any one who could have had even a pretence of impar- 
tiality. He was the only man who could maintain the 
balance and see justice done, even in theory: for the awe 
of his presence and of his spiritual powers might have 
restrained these fierce princes and barons and made some 
sort of reasonable discussion possible. For all these rea- 
sons, and also no doubt to assert practically the claim he 
had made for himself and his successors to be the judges 
of the earth and settle all such disputes as representatives 
of God, he was very unwilling to give up the project. It 
had come to be evident, however, in the spring of 1080 
when Lent began and the usual Council of the Lateran 
assembled, that Henry would never consent to this Diet, 
the very reason for which was the discussion of claims 
which he held as divine and infallible. Eudolf, his rival, 
was, or professed to be, as anxious for it as the Pope, 
though he never had taken any step to make Gregory's 
journey across the Alps possible. But at last it would seem 
that all parties gave up the thought of any such means of 



282 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

making peace. The state of affairs in Germany was daily 
becoming more serious, and when the envoys of Rudolf, 
after many fruitless visits to Rome, appeared at last with 
a sort of ultimatum, demanding that some decisive step 
should be taken to put an end to the suspense, there was no 
longer any possibility of further delay. Henry also sent 
ambassadors on the same occasion : but they came late, and 
were not received. The Council of the Lateran met, no 
doubt with many searchings of heart and a great excitement 
pervading the assembly where matters of such importance 
were about to be settled, and such a decision as had never 
been asked from any Pope before, was about to be given 
from the chair of St. Peter to a half -believing, half -rebel- 
lious world. Whether any one really believed that a ques- 
tion involving the succession to the empire could be solved 
in this way, it is impossible to tell: but the envoys of 
Rudolf, whose arms had been for the moment victorious, 
and who had just driven Henry a fugitive before him, made 
their appeal to the Pope with a vehemence almost tragic, as 
to one whose power and responsibility in the matter were 
beyond doubt. The statement of their case before the 
Council was as follows : 

"We delegates of our lord the King, Rudolf, and of the princes, 
we complain before God, and before St. Peter to you our father and 
this holy Council, that Henry, set aside by your Apostolic authority 
from the kingdom, has notwithstanding your prohibition invaded the 
said kingdom, and has devastated everything around by sword and fire 
and pillage ; he has with impious cruelty, driven bishops and arch- 
bishops out of their sees, and has distributed their dignities as fiefs 
among his partisans. Werner of holy memory, archbishop of Magde- 
burg, has perished by his tyranny ; Aldebert, bishop of Worms, is still 
held in prison contrary to the Apostolic order ; many thousands of 
men have been slaughtered by his faction, many churches pillaged, 
burned and destroyed. The assaults of Henry upon our princes be- 
cause they withdrew their obedience from him according to the com- 
mand of the Apostolic See, are numberless. And the assembly which 
you have desired to call together, Holy Father, for the establishment 
of the truth and of peace, has not been held, solely by the fault of 
Henry and his adherents. For these reasons we supplicate your clem- 
ency in our own name and that of the Holy Church of God to do justice 
upon the sacrilegious violator of the Church." 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 283 

It will be remarked that the whole blame of the struggle 
is here thrown upon the Church : — as in the remonstrance 
of the Saxon bishops, who say not a word of their national 
grievances against Henry, which nevertheless were many 
and great, and the real foundation of the war — but entirely 
attribute it to the action of Gregory in excommunicating 
and authorising them to withdraw their homage from the 
king. Nobody, we think, can read the chaotic and perplex- 
ing history of the time without perceiving how mere a pre- 
text this was, and how little in reality the grievances of the 
Church had to do with the internecine struggle. The curi- 
ous thing however, is that Gregory, either in policy or 
self-deception, accepts the whole responsibility and is will- 
ing to be considered the cause and maker of these deadly 
wars, as if the struggle had been one between the Church 
and the King alone. A sense of responsibility was evi- 
dently strong in his mind as he rose from his presiding 
chair on this great occasion, in the breathless silence that 
followed the complaint and appeal of Rudolf's emissaries. 
Not a voice in defence of Henry had been raised in the 
Council, which, as many voices were in his favour in pre- 
ceding assemblies, shows the consciousness of the conclave 
that another and more desperate phase of the quarrel had 
been reached. 

Gregory himself had sat silent for a moment, over- 
whelmed with the awe of the great crisis. When he rose 
it was with a breaking voice and tears in his eyes : and the 
form of the deliverance was as remarkable as its tenor. 
Gregory addressed — not the Council : but, with an extraor- 
dinary outburst of emotion, the Apostle in whose name 
he pronounced judgment and in whose chair he sat. Noth- 
ing could have been more impressive than this sudden and 
evidently spontaneous change from the speech expected 
from him by the awed and excited assembly, to the per- 
sonal statement and explanation given forth in trembling 



284 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

accents but with uplifted head and eyes raised to the 
unseen, to the great potentate in heavenly places whose 
representative he believed himself to be. However vague 
might be the image of the apostle in other eyes, to Gregory 
St. Peter was his living captain, the superior officer of the 
Church, to whom his second in command had to render an 
account of his procedure in face of the enemy. The amaze- 
ment of that great assembly, the awe suddenly imposed 
even on the great body of priests, too familiar perhaps with 
holy things to be easily impressed — much more on the 
startled laymen, Rudolf's envoys and their attendants, by 
this abstract address, suddenly rising out of the midst of 
the rapt assembly to a listener unseen, must have been 
extraordinary. It marked, as nothing else could have done, 
the realisation in Gregory's mind of a situation of extraor- 
dinary importance, such an emergency as since the Church 
came into being had seldom or never occurred in her history 
before. He stood before the trembling world, himself a 
solitary man shaken to the depths, calling upon his great 
predecessor to remember that it was not with his own will 
that he had ascended that throne or accepted that respon- 
sibility — that it was Peter, or rather the two great leaders 
of the Church together, Peter the Prince of the Apostles, 
Paul the Doctor and instructor of the nations, who had 
chosen him, not he who had thrust himself into their place. 
To these august listeners he recounted everything, the 
whole story of the struggle, the sins of Henry, his submis- 
sion and absolution, his renewed rebellion, always against 
the Church, against the Apostles, against the Ecclesiastical 
authority: while the breathless assembly around, left out 
in this solemn colloquy, sat eager, drinking in every word, 
overcome by the wonder of the situation, the strange atti- 
tude of the shining figure in the midst, who was not 
even praying, but reporting, explaining every detail to his 
unseen general above. Henry had been a bad king, a cruel 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 285 

oppressor, an invader of every right: and it would have 
been the best policy of the Churchman to put forth these 
effective arguments for his overthrow. But of this there is 
not a word. He was a rebel against the Church, and by 
the hand of the Church it was just and right that he should 
fall. 

One cannot but feel a descent from this high and vision- 
ary ground in the diction of the sentence that followed, a 
sentence not now heard for the first time, and which per- 
haps no one there felt, tremendous as its utterance was, to 
be the last word in this great quarrel. 

" Therefore trusting to the judgment and to the mercy of God, and 
of the Holy Mother of God, and armed with your authority, I place 
under excommunication and I bind with the chains of anathema, Henry 
called King, and all his fellow sinners ; and on the part of Almighty 
God, and of You, shutting him out henceforward from the kingdoms 
of Germany and of Italy, I take from him all royal power and dignity ; 
I forbid any Christian to obey him as king ; and I absolve from their 
sworn promises all those who have made, or may make, oaths of alle- 
giance to him. May this Henry with his fellow sinners have no force 
in fight and obtain no victory in life ! " 

Having with like solemnity bestowed upon Rudolf the 
kingdom of Germany (Italy is not named) with all royal 
rights, the Pope thus concludes his address to the spiritual 
Heads in heaven of the Church on earth : 

" Holy Fathers and Lords ! let the whole world now know and un- 
derstand that as you can bind and loose in heaven, you can also upon 
earth give and take away from each according to his merits, empires, 
kingdoms, principalities, duchies, marquisates, counties, and all pos- 
sessions. You have often already taken from the perverse and the 
unworthy, patriarchal sees, primacies, archbishoprics, and bishoprics, 
in order to bestow them upon religious men. If you thus judge in 
things spiritual, with how much more power ought you not to do so in 
things secular ! And if you judge the angels who are the masters of 
the proudest princes, what may you not do with the princes, their 
slaves ! Let the kings and great ones of the earth know to-day how 
great you are, and what your power is ; let them fear to neglect the 
ordinances of the Church ! Accomplish quickly your judgment on 
Henry so that to the eyes of all it may be apparent that it falls upon 
him not by chance but by your power. Yet may his confusion turn to 
repentance, that his soul may be saved in the day of the Lord." 



286 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

Whether the ecstasy of his own rapt and abstract com- 
munion with the unseen, that subtle inspiration of an 
Invisible too clearly conceived for human weakness to sus- 
tain, had gone to Gregory's head and drawn him into fuller 
expression of this extraordinary assertion and claim beyond 
all reason : or whether the long-determined theory of his 
life thus found complete development it is difficult to tell. 
These assumptions were, indeed, the simple and practical 
outcome of claims already made and responsibilities 
assumed: claims which had been already put feebly into 
operation by other Popes before. But they had never 
before been put into words so living or so solemn. Greg- 
ory himself had, hitherto, claimed only the right to judge, 
to arbitrate at the head of a National Diet. He had not 
himself, so far as we can see, assumed up to this moment 
the supposed rights of Peter, alone and uncontrolled. He 
had given England to William, but only on the warrant of 
the bond of Harold solemnly sworn before the altar. He 
had made legitimate the claims already established by con- 
quest of Robert Guiscard and others of the Norman con- 
querors. But the standard set up in the Lateran Council 
of 1080 was of a far more imperative kind, and asserted 
finally through Peter and Paul, his holy fathers and lords, 
an authority absolute and uncompromising such as made 
the brain reel. This extraordinary address must have sent 
a multitude, many of them no doubt ordinary men with no 
lofty ideal like his own, back to their bishoprics and 
charges, swelling with a sense of spiritual grandeur and 
power such as no promotion could give, an inspiration 
which if it made here and there a high spirit thrill to the 
necessities of a great position, was at least as likely to 
make petty tyrants and oppressors of meaner men. The 
only saving clause in a charge so full of the elements of 
mischief, is that to the majority of ordinary minds it would 
contain very little personal meaning at all. 




s 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 289 

From this time nothing was possible but war to the death 
between Gregory and Henry, the deposed king, who was as 
little disposed to accept his deposition as any anathema was 
able to enforce it. We have already remarked on various 
occasions, and it is a dreadful coining down from the height 
of so striking a scene, and so many great words, to be 
obliged to repeat it : yet it is very evident that notwith- 
standing the terrible pictures we have had of the force of 
these anathemas, they made very little difference in the life 
of the world. There were always schismatic or rebellious 
priests enough to carry on, in defiance of the Pope, those 
visible ceremonies and offices of religion which are indis- 
pensable to the common order of life. There were, no 
doubt, great individual sufferings among the faithful, but 
the habits of ordinary existence could only have been inter- 
fered with had every bishop and every priest been loyal to 
the Pope, which was far from being the case. 

It was at the conclusion of this Council that Gregory is 
said to have sent to Eudolf the famous imperial crown bear- 
ing the inscription 

Petra dedit Petro, Petrus diadema Rodolpho, 

of which Villemain makes the shabby remark that, " After 
having held the balance as uncertain, and denied the share 
he had in the election of Eudolf, now that it was confirmed 
by success Gregory VII. claimed it for himself and the 
Church," — a conclusion neither in consonance with the facts 
nor with the character of the man. 

That Henry should receive this decision meekly was of 
course impossible. Once more he attempted to make re- 
prisals in an assembly held at Brixen in the following June, 
when by means of the small number of thirty bishops, chiefly 
excommunicated persons, and, of course, in any case with- 
out any right to judge their superior, Gregory himself was 



290 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap: 

once more deposed, excommunicated, and cut off from the 
communion of these ecclesiastics and their followings. In 
the sentence given by this paltry company, Gregory is 
accused of following the heresy of Berengarius, whose re- 
cantation had the year before been received at the Lateran : 
and also of being a necromancer and-magician, and possessed 
by an evil spirit. These exquisite reasons are the chief of 
the allegations against him, and the principal ground upon 
which his deposition was justified. Guibert of Ravenna, 
long his enemy, and one of the excommunicated, was elected 
by the same incompetent tribunal as Pope in his place, 
naturally without any of the canonical requirements for 
such an election ; though we are told that Henry laid vio- 
lent hands on the bishop of Ostia whose privilege it was to 
officiate at the consecration of the Popes, and who was then 
in foreign parts acting as legate, in order to give some show 
of legality to the election. Guibert however, less scrupu- 
lous than the former intruder Gadalous, took at once the 
title of Clement III. The great advantage of such a step, 
beside the sweetness of revenge, no doubt was that it prac- 
tically annulled the papal interdict so far as the knowledge 
of the vulgar was concerned: for so long as there were 
priests to officiate, a bishop to preside, and a Pope to bless 
and to curse, how should the uninstructed people know that 
their country was under any fatal ban? To make such a 
universal excommunication possible the whole priesthood 
must have been subject and faithful to the one sole authority 
in the Church. 

Unfortunately for the prestige of Gregory, Henry was 
much more successful in the following year in all his enter- 
prises, and it was Rudolf, the friend and elected of the 
Pope, and not his adversary, who died after a battle which 
was not otherwise decisive. This event must have been a 
great blow and disappointment as well as an immediate and 
imminent danger. For some time, however, the ordinary 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 291 

course of life went on in Rome, and Gregory, by means of 
various negotiations, and also no doubt by reason of his own 
consciousness of the pressing need for a champion and sup- 
porter, made friends again with Robert Guiscard, exerting 
himself to settle the quarrels between him and his neigh- 
bours, and to win him thus by good offices to the papal side. 
To complete this renewal of friendship Gregory, though 
ailing, and amid all these tumults beginning to feel the 
weight of years, made a journey to Benevento, which be- 
longed to the Holy See, and there met his former penitent 
and adversary, the brave and wily Norman. The interview 
between them took place in sight of a great crowd of the 
followers of both and the inhabitants of the whole region, 
assembled in mingled curiosity and reverence, to see so great 
a scene. The Norman, relieved of the excommunications 
under which he had lain for past offences, and endowed 
with the Pope's approval and blessing, swore fealty and 
obedience to Gregory, promising henceforward to be the 
champion of Holy Church, protecting her property and 
her servants, keeping, her counsel and acknowledging her 
authority. 

" From this hour and for the future I will be faithful to 
the Holy Roman Church, and to the Apostolic See, and to 
you, my lord Gregory, the universal Pope. I will be your 
defender, and that of the Roman Church, aiding you accord- 
ing to my power to maintain, to occupy, and to defend the 
domains of St. Peter and his possessions, against all comers, 
reserving only the March of Fermo, of Salerno, and of 
Amalfi, concerning which no definite arrangement has yet 
been made." 

These last, and especially the town of Salerno, one of the 
cities la piu bella e phi deliziosa of Italy, says old Muratori, 
had been recently taken by Guiscard from their Prince Gi- 
solf o, a protege and friend of the Pope, who excepts them in 
the same cautious manner from the sanction given to Rob- 



292 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

ert's other conquests. Gregory's act of investiture is alto- 
gether a very cautious document : 

I Gregory, Pope, invest you Duke Robert, with all the lands given 
you by my predecessors of holy memory, Nicolas and Alexander. As 
for the lands of Salerno, Amain and a portion of the March of Fermo, 
held by you unjustly, I suffer it patiently for the present, having con- 
fidence in God and in your honesty, and that you will conduct yourself 
in future for the honour of God and St. Peter in such a manner as 
becomes you, and as I may tolerate, without risking your soul or mine. 

It is not likely that Gregory hoped so much from Guis- 
card's probity as that he would give up that citta deliziosa, 
won by his bow and his spear. Nor was he then aware how 
his own name and all its associations would remain in Sa- 
lerno, its chief distinction throughout all the ages to come. 

The life of Gregory had never been one of peace or tran- 
quillity. He had been a fighting man all his days, but dur- 
ing a great part of them a successful one : the years which 
remained to him, however, were one long course of agita- 
tions, of turmoil, and of revolution. In 1081 Henry, scarcely 
successful by arms, but confident in the great discourage- 
ment of the rival party through the death of Rudolf, crossed 
the Alps again, and after defeating Matilda, ravaging her 
duchy and driving her to the shelter of Canossa, marched 
upon Rome. Guibert of Ravenna, the Anti-Pope, accompa- 
nied him with many bishops and priests of his party. On 
his first appearance before Rome, the energy of Gregory, 
and his expectation of some such event, had for once in- 
spired the city to resistance, so that the royal army got no 
further than the " fields of Nero," outside the walls of the 
Leonine city to the north of St. Peter's, by which side they 
had approached Rome. Henry had himself crowned em- 
peror by his anti-pope in his tent, an act performed by the 
advice of his schismatic bishops, and to the great wonder, 
excitement, and interest of the surrounding people, over- 
awed by that great title which he had not as yet ventured 
to assume. This futile coronation was indeed an act with 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 293 

which he amused himself periodically during the following 
years from time to time. But the heats of summer and the 
fever of Rome soon drove the invaders back. In 1082 
Henry returned to the attack, but still in vain. In 1083 he 
was more successful, and seized that portion of Rome called 
the Leonine city, which included St. Peter's and the tombs 
of the Apostles, the great shrine which gave sanctity to the 
whole. The Pope, up to this time free, though continually 
threatened by his enemies, and still carrying on as best he 
could the universal affairs of the Church, was now forced to 
retire to St. Angelo. He was at this moment without de- 
fender or champion on any side. The brave Matilda, ever 
faithful, was shut up in impregnable Canossa. Guiscard, 
after having secured all that he wanted from Gregory, had 
gone off upon his own concerns, and was now struggling to 
make for himself a footing in Greece, indifferent to the 
Pope's danger. The Romans, after the brief interval of in- 
spiration which gave them courage to make a stand for the 
Pope and the integrity of their city, had fallen back into 
their usual weakness, dazzled by Henry's title of Emperor, 
and cowed by the presence of his Germans at their gates. 
They had never had any spirit of resistance, and it was 
scarcely to be expected of a corrupt and fickle population, 
accustomed for ages to be the toys of circumstance, that they 
should begin a nobler career now. And there the Pope 
remained, shut up in that lonely stronghold, overlooking the 
noisy and busy streets which overflowed with foreign sol- 
diers and the noise of arms, while in the Church of St. 
Peter close by, Guibert the mock Pope assembled a mock 
council to absolve the new Emperor from all the anathemas 
that had followed one another upon his head. 

There was much discussion and debate in that strange 
assembly, in which every second man at least must have had 
in his secret heart a sense of sacrilege, over this subject. 
They did not apparently deny the legal weight of these 



294 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

anathemas, which they recognised as the root and origin of 
all the misfortunes that had followed ; but they maintained 
a feeble contention that the proceedings of Gregory had 
been irregular, seeing that Henry had never had the oppor- 
tunity of defending himself. Another of the pretensions 
attributed to the Roman Church by her enemies, and this 
time with truth, as it has indeed become part of her code — 
was, as appears, set up on this occasion for the first time, 
and by the schismatics. Gregory had forbidden the people 
to accept the sacraments from the hands of vicious or simo- 
niacal priests. Guibert, called Clement III., and his ficti- 
tious council declared with many learned quotations that 
the sacraments in themselves were all in all, and the admin- 
istrators nothing; and that though given by a drunkard, an 
adulterer, or a murderer, the rites of the Church were equally 
effectual. It was however still more strange that in this as- 
sembly, made up of schismatics, many of them guilty of these 
very practices, a timid remonstrance should have been made 
against the very sins which had separated them from the 
rest of the Church and which Gregory had spent his life in 
combating. The Pope had not been successful either in 
abolishing simony or in maintaining celibacy and continence 
among the clergy, but he had roused a universal public opin- 
ion, a sentiment stronger than himself, which found a place 
even in the mind of his antagonist and rival in arms. 

Thus the usurper timidly attacked with arguments either 
insignificant or morally dangerous the acts of the Pope — 
yet timidly echoed his doctrine : with the air throughout all 
of a pretender alarmed by the mere vicinity of an unfortu- 
nate but rightful monarch. Guibert had been bold enough 
before ; he had the air now of a furtive intruder trembling 
lest in every chance sound he might hear the step of the true 
master returning to his desecrated house. 

The next event in this curious struggle is more extraor- 
dinary still. Henry himself, it is evident, must have been 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 295 

struck with the feeble character of this unauthorised assem- 
bly, notwithstanding that the new Pope was of his own 
making and the council held under his auspices ; or perhaps 
he hoped to gain something by an appearance of candour 
and impartiality though so late in the day. At all events he 
proposed, immediately after the close of the fictitious coun- 
cil, to the citizens and officials who still held the other por- 
tions of the city, in the name of Gregory — to withdraw his 
troops, to leave all roads to Rome free, and to submit his 
cause to another council presided over by Gregory and to 
which, as in ordinary cases, all the higher ranks of the 
clergy should be invited. It is impossible to conceive a 
more extraordinary contradiction of all that had gone before. 
The proposal, however, strange as it seems, was accepted 
and carried out. In November, 1083, this assembly was 
called together. Henry withdrew with his army towards 
Lombardy, the peaceful roads were all reopened, and bishops 
and abbots from all parts of Christendom hastened, no 
doubt trembling, yet excited, to Rome. Henry, notwith- 
standing his liberality of kind offers, exercised a considerable 
supervision over these travellers, for we hear that he stopped 
the deputies whom the German princes had sent to repre- 
sent them, and also many distinguished prelates, two of 
whom had been specially attached to his mother Agnes, 
along with one of the legates of the Pope. The attempt to 
pack the assembly, or at least to weed it of its most remark- 
able members in this way was not, however, successful, and 
a large number of ecclesiastics were got together notwith- 
standing all the perils of the journey. 

The meeting was a melancholy one, overshadowed by the 
hopelessness of a position in which all the right was on one 
side and all the power on the other. After three days' 
deliberation, which came to nothing, the Pope addressed — 
it was for the last time in Eome — his faithful counsellors. 
"He spoke with the tongue of an angel rather than of a 



296 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

man," bidding them to be firm and patient, to hold fast to 
the faith, and to quit themselves like men, however dark 
might be the days on which they had fallen. The entire 
convocation broke forth into tears as the old man con- 
cluded. 

But Gregory would not be moved to any clemency towards 
his persecutor. He yielded so far as not to repeat his 
anathema against him, excommunicating only those who by 
force or stratagem had turned back and detained any who 
were on their way to the Council. But he would not con- 
sent to crown Henry as emperor, which — notwithstanding 
his previous coronation in his tent by Guibert, and a still 
earlier one, it is said, at Brixen immediately after the 
appointment of the anti-pope — was what the rebellious 
monarch still desired ; nor would he yield to the apparent 
compulsion of circumstances and make peace, without re- 
pentance on the part of Henry. No circumstances could 
coerce such a man. The fruitless council lasted but three 
days, and separated without making any change in the 
situation. The Romans, roused again perhaps by the brief 
snatch of freedom they had thus seemed to have, rose 
against Henry's garrison and regained possession of the 
Leonine city which he had held : and thus every particular 
of the struggle was begun and repeated over again. 

This extraordinary attempt, after all that had happened 
— after the council in which Henry had deposed Gregory, 
the council in St. Peter's itself, held by the anti-pope, and 
all the abuse he had poured upon " the monk Hildebrand," 
as he had again and again styled the Pope — by permitting 
an assembly in which the insulted pontiff should be restored 
to all his authority and honours, to move Gregory to accept 
and crown him, is one of the most wonderful things in his- 
tory. But the attempt was the last he ever made, as it was 
the most futile. After the one flash of energy with which 
Rome renewed the struggle, and another period of renewed 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 297 

attacks and withdrawals, Henry became master of the city, 
though never of the castle of St. Angel o where Gregory 
sat indomitable, relaxing not a jot of his determination 
and strong as ever in his refusal to withdraw, unless after 
full repentance, his curse from Henry. Various castles and 
fortified places continued to be held in the name of the 
Pope, both within and without the walls of the city : which 
fact throws a curious light upon its existing aspect : but 
these remnants of defence had little power to restrain the 
conqueror and his great army. 

And then again Kome saw one of those sights which from 
age to age had become familiar to her, the triumph of arms 
and overwhelming force under the very eyes of the im- 
prisoned ruler of the city. The Lateran Palace, so long- 
deserted, awoke to receive a royal guest. The sober courts 
of the papal house blazed with splendid costumes and 
resounded with all the tumult of rejoicing and triumph. 
The first of the great ceremonies was the coronation of the 
Archbishop Guibert as Clement III., which took place in 
Passion Week in the year 1084. Pour months before Greg- 
ory had descended from his stronghold to hold the council 
in which Henry had still hoped to persuade or force him to 
complaisance, flinging Guibert lightly away ; but the king's 
hopes had failed and Guibert was again the temporary 
symbol of that spiritual power without which he could 
not maintain himself. On Easter Sunday following, three 
great processions again streamed over the bridge of St. 
Angelo under the eyes, it may be, of Gregory high on the 
battlements of his fortress, or at least penetrating to his 
seclusion with the shouts and cheers that marked their prog- 
ress — the procession of the false Pope, that of the king, 
that of Bertha the king's wife, whom it had required all the 
efforts of Gregory and his faithful bishops to preserve from 
a cruel divorce : she who had set her maids with baton and 
staff to beat the life half out of that false spouse and caitiff 



298 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

knight in his attempt to betray her. The world had tri- 
umphed over the Church, the powers of darkness over those 
of light, a false and treacherous despot, whose word even 
his own followers held as nothing, over the steadfast, pure, 
and high-minded priest, who, whatever we may think of 
his motives — and no judgment upon Gregory can ever be 
unanimous — had devoted his life to one high purpose and 
held by it through triumph and humiliation, unmoved and 
immovable. Gregory was as certain of his great position 
now, the Vicar of Christ commissioned to bind and to loose, 
to judge with impartiality and justice all men's claims, to 
hold the balance of right and wrong all over the world, as 
he watched the gay processions pass, and heard the heralds 
sounding their trumpets and the anti-pope, the creature of 
Henry's will, passing by to give his master (for the third 
time) the much-longed-for imperial crown, as when he him- 
self stood master within the battlements of Canossa and raised 
that suppliant king to the possibilities of empire from his feet. 
It is a curious detail adding a touch to the irony which 
mingles with so many human triumphs and downfalls, that 
the actual imperial crown seems at one time at least to have 
been in Gregory's keeping. During the abortive council, for 
which, for three days he had returned to the Lateran, he 
offered, though he refused to place it on his head, to give it 
up to Henry's hands, letting it down with a cord from a 
window of St. Angelo. This offer, Which could scarcely 
be other than ironical, seems to have been refused; but 
whether Gregory retained it in St. Angelo, or left it to be 
found in the Lateran treasury by the returning king, there 
is no information. If it was a fictitious crown which was 
placed upon Henry's head by the fictitious Pope, the curious 
travesty would be complete. And history does not say 
even why the ceremony performed before by the same hands 
on the banks of the Tiber, should have dropped out of 
recollection as a thing that had not been. 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 299 

During all this time nothing had been heard of Robert 
Guiscard who had so solemnly taken upon him the office of 
champion of the Holy See and knight of St. Peter. He had 
been about his own business, pursuing his conquests, eager 
to carve out new kingdoms for himself and his sons : but at 
last the Pope's appeals became too strong to be resisted. 
Henry, whose armies had doubtless not improved in force 
during the desultory warfare which must have affected 
more or less the consciences of many, and the hot summers, 
unwholesome for northerners, did not await the coming of 
this new and formidable foe. Matilda's Tuscans were more 
easily overcome than Guiscard's veterans of northern race. 
He called in his men from all the petty sieges which were 
wearing them out, and from that wall which he had forced 
the Romans with their own pitiful hands to build as a 
base of attacks against St. Angelo, and withdrew in haste, 
leaving the terrified citizens whom he had won over to his 
party, as little apt to arms as their forefathers had been, 
and in the midst of a half-ruined city — the strong positions 
in which were still held by the friends of the Pope — to do 
what they could against the most dreaded troops of Chris- 
tendom. The catastrophe was certain before it occurred. 
The resistance of the Romans to Robert Guiscard was little 
more than nominal, only enough to inflame the Normans and 
give the dreadful freedom of besiegers to their armed hordes. 
They delivered the Pontiff, but sacked the town which lay 
helpless in its ruins at their feet ; not even the churches 
were spared, nor their right of sanctuary acknowledged as 
six hundred years before Attila had acknowledged it. And 
all the fault of the Pope, as who could wonder if the 
sufferers cried? It was he who had brought these savages 
upon them, as it was he who had exposed them before to the 
hostility of Henry. Gregory had scarcely come forth from his 
citadel and returned to his palace when Rome was filled 
with scenes of blood and carnage, such as recalled the 



300 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

invasions of Huns and Vandals. The flames of the burning 
city lighted up the skies as he came forth in sorrow, 
delivered from his bondage, but a sad and burdened man. 
The chroniclers tell us that he flung himself at the feet of 
Guiscard to beg him to spare the city, crying out that he 
was Pope for edification and not for ruin. And though his 
prayer was to some extent granted, there is little doubt that 
here at the last the heart of Gregory and his courage were 
broken, and that though his resolution was never shaken, 
his strength could bear little more. This was the greatest, 
as it was the most uncalled for, misfortune of his life. 

He held a strange council in desolate Eome in the few 
days that followed, in which he repeated his anathema 
against Henry, Guibert, and all the clergy who were living 
in rebellion or in sin. But it would seem that even at such 
a moment the council was not unanimous and that the spirit 
of his followers was broken and cowed, and few could follow 
him in the steadfastness of his own unchangeable mind. 
And when this tremulous and disturbed assembly was over, 
held in such extraordinary circumstances, fierce Normans, 
wild Saracens forming the guard of the Pontiff, fire and 
ruin, and the shrieks of victims still disturbing the once 
peaceful air '— r- Gregory, sick at heart, turned his back upon 
the beloved city which he had laboured so hard to make 
once more mistress of the world. Perhaps he was not aware 
that he left Rome for ever ; but the conditions of that last 
restoration had broken his heart. He to bring bloodshed 
and rapine ! he who was Pope to build up and not to 
destroy ! It was more than the man who had borne all 
things else could endure. No doubt it was a crowning 
triumph for Guiscard to lead away with him the rescued 
Pontiff, and pose before all the world as Gregory's deliverer. 
The journey itself, however, was not without perils. The 
Campagna and all the wilder country beyond, about the 
Pontine marshes, was full of freebooting bands, Henry's 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 301 

partisans, or calling themselves so, who harassed the march 
with guerilla attacks. In one such flying combat a monk of 
Gregory's own retinue was killed, and the Pope had to ride 
like the men-at-arms, now starting at daybreak, now travelling- 
deep into the night. At Monte Cassino, in the great convent 
where his friend Desiderius, who was to be his successor 
reigned, there was a welcome pause, and he had time to 
refresh himself among his old friends, the true brethren and 
companions of his soul. The legends of the monks — or 
was it the pity of the ages beginning already to awaken and 
rising to a great height of human compunction by the time 
the early historians began to write his story ? — accord to 
him here that compensation of divine acknowledgment 
which the heart recognises as the only healing for such 
wounds. Some one among the monks of Monte Cassino saw 
a dove hovering over his head as he said mass. Perhaps 
this was merely a confusion with the legend of Gregory the 
Great, his predecessor, to whom that attribute belongs; 
perhaps some gentle brother whose heart ached with 
sympathy for the suffering Pope had glamour in his eyes 
and saw. 

Gregory continued his journey, drawn along in the army 
of Robert Guiscard as in a chariot, which began now to be, 
as he reached the south Italian shores, a chariot of triumph. 
All the towns and villages on the way came out to greet the 
Pope, to ask his blessing. The bishop of Salerno, with his 
clergy, came forth in solemn procession with shining robes 
and sacred standards to meet him. Neither Pope nor prince 
could have found a more exquisite retreat from the troubles 
of an evil world. The beautiful little city, half Saracenic, 
in all the glory of its cathedral still new and white and 
blooming with colour like a flower, sat on the edge of that 
loveliest coast, the sea like sapphire surging up in many 
lines of foam, the waves clapping their hands as in the 
Psalms, and above, the olive-mantled hills rising soft 



302 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

towards the bluest sky, with on every point a white village, 
a little church tower, the convent walls shining in the sun. 
It is still a region as near Paradise as human imagination 
can grasp, more fair than any scene we know. One won- 
ders if the Pope's heart had sufficient spring left in it to 
take some faint delight in that wonderful conjunction of 
earth and sea and sky. But such delights were not much 
thought of in his day, and it is very possible he might have 
felt it something like a sin to suffer his heart to go forth in 
any such carnal pleasure. 

But at least something of his old energy came back when 
he was settled in this wonderful place of exile. He . sent 
out his legates to the world, charged with letters to the 
faithful everywhere, to explain the position of affairs and 
to assert, as if now with his last breath, that it was because 
of his determination to purify the Church that all these con- 
spiracies had risen against him — which was indeed, not- 
withstanding all the developments taken by the question, 
the absolute truth. For it was Gregory's strongly conceived 
and faithfully held resolution to cleanse the Church from 
simony, to have its ministers and officers chosen for their 
worth and virtue, and power to guide and influence their 
flocks for good, and not because they had wealth to pay for 
their dignity and to maintain it, which was the beginning 
of the conflict. Henry who refused obedience and made 
a traffic of the holiest offices, and those degenerate and 
rebellious priests who continued to buy themselves into 
rich bishoprics and abbacies in defiance of every ecclesi- 
astical law and penalty, were the original offenders, and 
ought before posterity at least to bear the brunt. 

It is perhaps indiscreet to speak of an event largely 
affecting modern life in such words, but there is a whim- 
sical resemblance which is apt to call forth a smile between 
the action of a large portion of the Church of Scotland fifty 
years ago, and the life struggle of Gregory. In the former 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 303 

case it was the putting in of ministers to ecclesiastical 
benefices by lay authority, however veiled by supposed pop- 
ular assent, which was believed to be an infringement of 
the divine rights of the Church, and of the headship of 
Christ, by a religious body perhaps more scornful and con- 
demnatory than any other of everything connected with a 
Pope. It was not supposed in Scotland that the humble 
candidates for poor Scotch livings bought their advance- 
ment ; but the principle was the same. 

In the case of Gregory the positions thus bought and 
sold were of very great secular importance, carrying with 
them much wealth, power, and outward importance, which 
was not the case in the other ; but in neither case were the 
candidates chosen canonically or for their suitableness to 
the charge, but from extraneous motives and in spite of the 
decisions of the Church. This was to destroy the headship 
of Peter, the authority of his representative, the rights of 
the sacred Spouse of Christ. Both claims were perfectly 
honest and true. But Gregory, as in opposition to a far 
greater grievance, and one which overspread all Christen- 
dom, was by far the more distinguished confessor, as be 
was the greater martyr of the Holy Cause. 

For this was undoubtedly the first cause of all the suffer- 
ings of the Pontiff, the insults showered upon him, the 
wrongs he had to bear, the exile in which he died. The 
question has been settled against him, we believe, in every 
country, even the most deeply Christian. Scotland indeed 
has prevailed in having her own way, but that is because 
she has no important benefices, involving secular rank and 
privilege. No voice in England has ever been raised in 
defence of simony, but the conge (Velire would have been as 
great an offence to Pope Gregory, and as much of a sin to 
Dr. Chalmers, as the purchase of an archbishopric in one 
case, or the placing of an unpopular preacher in another. 
The Pope's claim of authority over both Church and world, 



301 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

though, originally and fundamentally based upon his rights 
as the successor of Peter, developed out of this as the fruit 
out of the flower. From a religious point of view, and if 
we could secure that all Popes, candidates for ecclesiastical 
offices, and electors to the same, should be wise and good 
men, the position would be unassailable ; but as it is not so, 
the question seems scarcely worth risking a man's living 
for, much less his life. But perhaps no man since, if it 
were not his successors in the popedom, had such strenuous 
reasons to spend his life for it as Gregory, as none has ever 
had a severer struggle. 

This smaller question, however, though it is the funda- 
mental one, has been almost forgotten in the struggle be- 
tween the Pope and the Emperor — the sacred and the 
secular powers — which developed out of it. The claim to 
decide not only who was to be archbishop but who was to 
be king, rose into an importance which dwarfed every 
other. This was not originated by Gregory, but it was by 
his means that it became the great question of the age, and 
rent the world in twain. The two great institutions of the 
Papacy and the Empire had been or seemed to be an ideal 
method of governing the world, the one at the head of all 
spiritual concerns, the other commanding every secular 
power and all the progress of Christendom. Circumstances 
indeed, and the growth of independence and power in other 
nations, had circumscribed the sphere of trie Empire, while 
the Papacy had grown in influence by the same means. 
But still the Empire was the head of the Christian world 
of nations, as the Pope was the head of those spiritual 
princedoms which had developed into so much importance. 
When the interests were so curiously mingled, it was certain 
that a collision must occur one time or another. There 
had been frequent jars, in days when the power of the Em- 
pire was too great for anything but a momentary resistance 
on the part of the Pope. But when the decisive moment 



in.] THE POPE GREGORY VII. 305 

came and the struggle became inevitable, Gregory — a man 
fully equal to the occasion — was there to meet it. His 
success, such as it was, was for later generations. To him- 
self personally it brought the crown of tragedy only, with- 
out even any consciousness of victory gained. 

The Pope lived not quite a year in Salerno. He died in 
that world of delight in the sweetness of the May, when 
all is doubly sweet by those flowery hills and along that 
radiant shore. Among his last words were these: — "My 
brethren, I make no account of my good works: my only 
confidence is that I have always loved justice and hated 
iniquity : — and for that I die in exile," he added before 
his end. In the silence and the gathering gloom one of his 
attendants cried out, " How can you say in exile, my lord, 
you who, the Vicar of Christ and of the apostles, have re- 
ceived all the nations for your inheritance, and the world 
for your domain?" With these words in his ears the Pope 
departed to that country which is the hope of every soul, 
where iniquity is not and justice reigns. 

He died on the 25th May, 1085, not having yet attained 
his seventieth year. He had been Pope for twelve years 
only, and during that time had lived in continual danger, 
fighting always for the Church against the world. A suffer- 
ing and a melancholy man, his life had none of those solaces 
which are given to the commonest and the poorest. His 
dearest friends were far from him: the hope of his life 
was lost : he thought no doubt that his standard fell with 
him, and that the labours of his life were lost also, and had 
come to nothing. But it was not so ; Gregory VII. is still 
after these centuries one of the greatest Popes of Borne: 
and though time has wrought havoc with that great ideal 
of the Arbiter and universal Judge which never could have 
been made into practical reality, unless the world and the 
Church had been assured of a succession of the wisest and 
holiest of men — he yet secured for a time something like 



306 



THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [en. in. 



that tremendous position for a number of his successors, 
and created an opinion and sentiment throughout Christ- 
endom that the reforms on which he insisted ought to be, 
which is almost the nearest that humanity can come to 
universal reformation. The Church which he left seemed 
shattered into a hundred fragments, and he died exiled and 
powerless ; but yet he opened the greatest era of her exist- 
ence to what has always been one of the wisest, and still 
remains one of the strongest institutions in the world, 
against which, in spite of many errors and much tribula- 
tions, it has never been in the power of the gates of hell to 
prevail. 






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THE FOUNTAIN OF THE TORTOISE. 



CHAPTEE IV. 



INNOCENT III. 



IT is not our object, the reader is aware, to give here a 
history of Rome, or of its pontiffs, or of the tumultuous 
world of the Middle Ages in which a few figures of Popes 
and Princes stand out upon the ever-crowded, ever-changing 
background, helping us to hear among the wild confusion 
of clanging swords and shattering lances, of war cries and 
shouts of rage and triumph — and to see amidst the mist 
and smoke, the fire and flame, the dust of breached walls 
and falling houses. Our intention is solely to indicate 
those among the chiefs of the Church who are of the most 
importance to the great city, which, ever rebelling against 
them, ever carrying on a scarcely broken line of opposition 
and resistance, was still passive in their hands so far as pos- 

307 



308 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

terity is concerned, dragged into light, or left lying in dark- 
ness, according as its rulers were. It is usual to say that 
the great time of the Church, the age of its utmost ascen- 
dency, was during the period between Gregory VII. and 
Innocent III., the first of whom put forth its claim as Uni- 
versal Arbiter and Judge as no one had ever done before, 
while the second carried that claim to its climax in his re- 
markable reign — a reign all-influencing, almost all-potent, 
something more like a universal supremacy and rule over the 
whole earth than has ever been known either before or since. 
The reader has seen what was the effect upon his world of 
the great Hildebrand : how he laboured, how he proclaimed 
his great mission, with what overwhelming faith he believed 
in it, and, it must be added, with how little success he was 
permitted to carry it out. This great Pope, asserting his 
right as the successor of Peter to something very like a uni- 
versal dominion and the power of setting down and raising 
up all manner of thrones, principalities, and powers, lived 
fighting for the very ground he stood on, in an incessant 
struggle not only with the empire, but with every illiterate 
and ignoble petty court of his neighbourhood, with the rob- 
ber barons of the surrounding hills, with the citizens in his 
streets, with the villagers on his land — and, after having 
had more than once his independent realm restricted to the 
strong walls of St. Angelo, had at last to abandon his city 
for mere safety's sake, and die in exile far from the Rome 
he loved. 

The life of the other we have now to trace, as far as it is 
possible to keep the thread of it amid the tremendous dis- 
orders, disastrous wars and commotions of his time, in all 
of which his name is so mingled that in order to distinguish 
his story the student must be prepared to struggle through 
what is really the history of the world, there being scarcely 
a corner of that world — none at least with which history 
was then acquainted — which was not pervaded by Inno- 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 309 

cent, although few we think in which his influence had any 
such power as is generally believed. 

This Pope was not like Hildebrand a man of the people. 
He had a surname and already a distinguished one. Lotha- 
rio Conti, son of Trasimondo, lord of Ferentino, of the 
family of the Dukes of Spoleto, was born in the year 1161 
in the little town of Anagni, where his family resided, a 
place always dear to him, and to which in the days of his 
greatness he loved to retire, to take refuge from the summer 
heats of Rome or other more tangible dangers. He was 
thus a member of the very nobility with which afterwards 
he had so much trouble, the unruly neighbours who made 
every road to Rome dangerous, and the suzerainty of the 
Pope in many cases a simple fiction. The young Lothario 
had three uncles in the Church in high places, all of them 
eventually Cardinals, and was destined to the ecclesiastical 
profession, in which he was so certain of advancement, from 
his birth ; he was educated partly at Rome, at the school of 
St. John Lateran, specially destined for the training of the 
clergy, and therefore spent his boyhood under the shadow 
of the palace which was to be his home in later years. From 
Rome he went to the University of Paris, one of the great- 
est of existing schools, and studied canon law so as to make 
himself an authority on that subject, then one of the most 
engrossing and important branches of learning. He loved 
the "beneficial tasks," and perhaps also the freedom and 
freshness of university life, where probably the bonds of the 
clerical condition were less felt than in other places, though 
Innocent never seems to have required indulgence in that 
respect. Besides his readings in canon law, he studied with 
great devotion the Scriptures, and their interpretation, after 
the elaborate and highly artificial fashion of the day, divid- 
ing each text into a myriad of heads, and building up the 
most recondite argument on a single phrase with meanings 
spiritual, temporal, scholastic, and imaginary. There he 



310 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

made several warm friends, among others Robert Curzon, 
an Englishman who served him afterwards in various high 
offices, not so much to the credit of their honour ia later 
times as of the faithfulness of their friendship. 

Young Conti proceeded afterwards to Bologna, then 
growing into great reputation as a centre of instruction. 
He had, in short, the best education that his age was 
acquainted with, and returned to his ecclesiastical home at 
Rome and the protection of his Cardinal-uncles a perfectly 
well-trained and able young man, learned in all the learning 
of his day, acquainted more or less with the world, and 
ready for any service which the Church to which he was 
wholly devoted might require of him. He was a young 
man certain of promotion in any case. He had no sooner 
taken the first orders than he was made a canon of St. 
Peter's, of itself an important position, and his name very 
soon appears as acting in various causes brought on appeal 
to Rome — claims of convents, complaints among others of 
the monks of Canterbury in some forgotten question, where 
he was the champion of the complainants who were after- 
wards to bring him into so much trouble. These appeals 
were constantly occurring, and occupied a great deal of the 
time and thoughts of that learned and busy court of Rome, 
the Consistory, which became afterwards, under Innocent 
himself, the one great court of appeal for the world. 

About a hundred years had passed between the death of 
the great Pope Gregory, the monk Hildebrand, and the 
entrance of Lothario Conti upon public life ; but when the 
reader surveys the condition of that surging sea of society 
— the crowded, struggling, fighting, unresting world, which 
gives an impression of being more crowded, more teeming 
with wild life and force, with constant movement and tur- 
moil, than in our calmer days, though no doubt the facts 
are quite the reverse — he will find but little change apparent 
in the tremendous scene. As Gregory left the nations in 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 311 

endless war and fighting, so his great successor found them 
— king warring against king, prince against prince, count 
against count, city against city, nay, village against village, 
with a wide margin of personal struggle" around, and a 
general war with the Church maintained by all. A pano- 
rama of the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, 
could it have been furnished to any onlooker, would have 
showed its minutest lines of division by illuminations of 
devastating fire and flame, by the clangour of armies in 
collision, by wild freebooters in roaming bands, and little 
feudal wars in every district: every man in pursuit of 
something that was his neighbour's, perhaps only his life, 
a small affair — perhaps his wife, perhaps his lands, pos- 
sibly the mere satisfaction of a feud which was always on 
hand to fill up the crevices of more important fighting. 

With more desperate hostility still the cities in pairs set 
themselves against each other, all flourishing, busy places, 
full of industry, full of invention, but fuller still of rage 
against the brother close by, of the same tongue and race, 
Milan against Parma, Pisa against Genoa, Florence against 
all comers. Bigger wars devastated other regions, Ger- 
many in particular i n a n its many subdivisions, where it 
seems impossible to believe there could ever be a loaf of 
bread or a cup of wine of native growth, so perpetually was 
every dukedom ravaged and every principality brought to 
ruin. Two Emperors claiming the allegiance of that vast 
impossible holy Empire which extended from the northern 
sea to the soft Sicilian shores, two Popes calling themselves 
heads of the Church, were matters of every day. The 
Emperors had generally each a show of right ; but the anti- 
popes, though they had each a party, were altogether false 
functionaries with no show of law in their favour, gener- 
ally mere creatures of the empire, though often triumphant 
for a moment. In Gregory's day Henry IV. and Eudolf 
were the contending Emperors. In those of Innocent they 



312 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

were Philip and Otho. There were no doubt different 
principles involved, but the effect was the same; in both 
cases the Popes were deeply concerned, each asserting a 
prerogative, a right to choose between the contending can- 
didates and terminate the strife. That prerogative had 
been boldly claimed and asserted by Gregory ; in the cen- 
tury that followed every Pope had reasserted and attempted 
with all his might to enforce it; but though Innocent is 
universally set forth as the greatest and most powerful of 
all who did so, and as in part responsible for almost every 
evil thing that resulted, I do not myself see that his inter- 
ference was much more potential than that of Gregory, of 
which also so much is said, but which was so constantly 
baulked, thwarted, and contradicted in his day. So far as 
the Empire was concerned the Popes certainly possessed a 
right and privilege which gave a certain countenance to 
their claim, for until crowned by the ruling Pontiff no 
Emperor had full possession of his crown : but this did not 
affect the other Christian kingdoms over which Innocent 
claimed and attempted to exercise the same prerogative. 
The state of things, however, to the spectator is very much 
the same in the one century as the other. The age of storm 
and stress for the world of Christendom extended from 
one to another ; no doubt progress was being made, founda- 
tions laid, and possibilities slowly coming into operation, 
of which the beginnings may be detected even among all 
the noise and dust of the wars ; but outwardly the state of 
Europe was very much the same under Innocent as under 
Gregory : they had the same difficulties to encounter and 
the same ordeals to go through. 

Several short-lived Popes succeeded each other on the 
papal throne after Innocent began to ascend the steps of 
ecclesiastical dignity, which were so easy to the nephew of 
three Cardinals. He became a canon of St. Peter's while 
little more than twenty-one. Pope Lucius III. employed 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 313 

him about his court, Pope Gregory VIII. made him a sub- 
deacon of Rome. Pope Clement III. was his uncle Octavian, 
and made him Cardinal of "St. Sergius and St. Bacchus," 
a curious combination, and one which would better have 
become a more jovial priest. Then there came a faint and 
momentary chill over the prospects of the most rising 
and prosperous young ecclesiastic in Rome. His uncle was 
succeeded in the papal chair by a certain Cardinal, old and 
pious but little known to history, a member, of the Orsini 
family and hostile to the Conti, so that our young Cardinal 
relapsed a little into the cold shade. It is supposed to be 
during this period that he turned his thoughts to literature, 
and wrote his first book, a singular one for his age and 
position — and yet perhaps not so unlike the utterance of 
triumphant youth under its first check as might be supposed 
— De contemptu mundi, sive de miseriis humance conditionis, 
is its title. It was indeed the view of the world which 
every superior mind was supposed to take in his time, as it 
has again become the last juvenile fashion in our own; but 
the young Cardinal Conti had greater justification than our 
young prophets of evil. His work is full, as it always 
continues to be in his matured years, of the artificial con- 
structions which Paris and Bologna taught, and which 
characterise the age of the schoolmen : and it is not to be 
supposed that he had much that was new to say of that 
everlasting topic which was as hackneyed in the twelfth 
century as it is in the nineteenth. After he has explained 
that "every male child on his birth cries A and every 
female E; and when you say A with E it makes Eva, and 
what is Eva if not heu ! ha ! — alas ! " — he adds a descrip- 
tion of the troubles of life which is not quite so fanciful. 

' ' We enter life amid pains and cries, presenting no agreeable aspect, 
lower even than plants and vegetables, which give forth at least a pleas- 
ant odour. The duration of life becomes shorter every day ; few men 
reach their fortieth year, a very small number attain the sixtieth. . . . 
And how painful is life ! Death threatens us constantly, dreams frighten 



314 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

us, apparitions disturb us, w r e tremble for our friends, for our relations ; 
before we are prepared for it misfortune has come : sickness surprises 
us, death cuts the thread of our life. All the centuries have not been 
enough to teach even to the science of medicine the different kind of 
sufferings to which man's fragility exposes him. Human nature is 
more corrupt from day to day ; the world and our bodies grow old. 
Often the guilty is acquitted and the innocent is punished. . . . Every 
thought, every act, all the arts and devices are employed for no other 
end but to secure the glory and favour of men. To gain honour he 
uses flattery, he prays, he promises, he tries every underground way 
if he cannot get what he wants by direct measures ; or he takes it by 
force if he can depend on the support of friends or of relations. And 
what a burden a.re those high dignities ! When the ambitious man 
has attained the height of his desires his pride knows no bounds, his 
arrogance is without restraint ; he believes himself so much a better 
man as he is more elevated in position ; he disdains his friends, recog- 
nises no one, despises his oldest connections, walking proudly with his 
head high, insolent in words, the enemy of his superiors and the tyrant 
of his dependents." 

The young Cardinal spares no class in his animadver- 
sions, but the rich are held up as warnings rather than the 
poor, and the vainglory of the miserable sons of Adam is 
what disgusts him most. Here is a passage which carries 
us into the inner life of that much devastated, often ruined 
Eome, which nevertheless at its most distracted moment 
was never quite devoid of the splendours and luxuries it 
loved. 

"Has not the prophet declared his anathema against luxury in dress ? 
Yet the face is coloured with artificial colours as if the art of man could 
improve the work of God. What can be more vain than to curl the 
hair, to paint the cheeks, to perfume the person ? And what need is 
there for a table ornamented with a rich cover, and laid with knives 
mounted in ivory, and vases of gold and silver? What more vain 
again than to paint the rooms, to cover the doors with fine carvings, 
to lay down carpets in the ante-chambers, to repose one's self on a bed 
of down, covered with silken stuffs and surrounded with curtains ? " 

Some historical commentators take exception to this 
picture as imaginary, and too luxurious for the age; but 
after all a man of the time must have known better than 
even Muratori our invaluable guide : and we find again and 
again in the descriptions of booty taken in the wars, accounts 
of the furniture of the tents of the conquered, silver and 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 315 

gold vases, and costly ornaments of the table which if car- 
ried about to embellish the wandering and brief life of a 
campaign would surely be more likely still to appear among 
the riches of a settled dwelling-place. Cardinal Lothario 
however did not confine himself altogether to things he had 
intimate knowledge of, for one of his illustrations is that 
of a discontented wife, a character of which he could have 
no personal experience : the picture is whimsically correct 
to conventional precedent; it is the established piece which 
we are so well acquainted with in every age. 

"She desires fine jewels and dresses, and beautiful furniture with- 
out regard to the means of her husband ; if she does not get them she 
complains, she weeps, she grumbles and murmurs all night through. 
Then she says, ' So-and-so is much more expensive than I am, and 
everybody respects her ; while I, because I am poor, they look at me 
disdainfully over their shoulders.' Nobody must be praised or loved 
but herself ; if any other is beloved she thinks herself hated ; if any 
one is praised she thinks herself injured. She insists that everybody 
should love what she loves, and hate what she hates ; she will submit 
to nothing but dominates all ; everything ought to be permitted to her, 
and nothing forbidden. And after all (adds the future pope) whatever 
she may be, ugly, sick, mad, imperious, ill-tempered, whatever may 
be her faults, she must be kept if she is not unchaste ; and even then 
though the man may separate from her, he may not take another." 

This sounds as if the young Cardinal would have been 
less severe on the question of divorce than his clerical suc- 
cessors. The book however is quite conventional, and gives 
us little insight into the manner of man he was. Never- 
theless there are some actual thoughts in the perennial and 
often repeated argument, as when he maintains the sombre 
doctrine of eternal punishment with the words : " Deliver- 
ance will not be possible in hell, for sin will remain as an 
inclination even when it cannot be carried out." He also 
wrote a book upon the Mass in the quiet of these early 
days; and was diligent in performing his duties and visiting 
the poor, to whom he was always full of charity. 

When the old Pope died, however, there seems not to 
have been a moment's doubt as to who should succeed him. 



316 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

The Cardinal Lothario was but thirty-seven, his ability and 
learning were known indeed, but had as yet produced no 
great result : his family was distinguished but not of force 
enough to overawe the Conclave, and nothing but the 
impression produced upon the minds of his contemporaries 
by his character and acquirements could account for his 
early advancement. Pope Celestine in dying had recom- 
mended with great insistence the Cardinal John Colonna 
as his successor; but this seems scarcely to have been taken 
into consideration by the electors, who now, according to 
Hildebrand's institution, somewhat modified by succeeding 
Popes, performed their office without any pretence of con- 
sulting either priests or people, and still less with any 
reference to the Emperor. The election was held, not in 
the usual place, but in a church now untraceable, "Ad 
Septa Solis," situated somewhere near the Colosseum. The 
object of the Cardinals in making the election there, was 
safety, the German troops of the Emperor being at the time 
in possession of the entire surrounding country up to the 
very gates of Pome, and quite capable of making a raid 
upon the Lateran to stop any proceedings which might be 
disagreeable to their master; for the imperial authorities 
on their part had never ceased to assert their right to be 
consulted in the election of a Pope. Lothario made the 
orthodox resistance without which perhaps no early Pope 
ever ascended the papal throne, protesting his own inca- 
pacity for so great an office; but the Cardinals insisted, not 
granting him even a day's delay to think over it. The first 
of the Cardinal-deacons, Gratiano, an old man, invested 
him with the pluvial and greeted him as Innocent, appar- 
ently leaving him no choice even as to his name. Thus 
the grave young man, so learned and so austere, in the 
fulness of his manhood ascended St. Peter's chair. There 
is no need to suppose that there was any hypocrisy in his 
momentary resistance ; the papal crown was very far from 




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iv.] INNOCENT III. 319 

being one of roses, and a young man, even if lie had looked 
forward to that position and knew himself qualified for it, 
might well have a moment's hesitation when it was about 
to be placed on his head. 

When the announcement of the election was made to the 
crowd outside, it was received with cries of joy : and the 
entire throng — consisting no doubt in a large degree of 
the clergy, mingled with the ever-abundant masses of the 
common people, — accompanied the Cardinals and the Pope- 
elect to the Lateran, though that church, one would sup- 
pose, must still have been occupied by the old Pope on his 
bier, and hung with the emblems of mourning : for it was 
on the very day of Celestine's death that the election took 
place. Muratori suggests a mistake of dates. "Either 
Pope Celestine must have died a day sooner, or Innocent 
have been elected a day later," he says. After the account, 
more full than usual, of the ceremonies of the election, the 
brilliant procession, and the rejoicing crowd, sweep away 
into the silence, and no more is heard of them for six weeks, 
during which time Lothario waited for the Rogation days, 
the proper time for ordinations ; for though he had already 
risen so high in the Church, he was not yet a priest, but 
only in deacon's orders, which seems to have been the case 
in so many instances. The two ordinations took place on 
two successive days, the 22nd and 23rd of February, 1198. 

When he had received the final consecration, and had 
been invested with all the symbols of his high office — the 
highest in the world to his own profound consciousness, and 
to the belief of all who surrounded him — Pope Innocent 
III. rose from the papal chair, of which he had just taken 
possession, and addressed the immense assembly. Whether 
it had become the custom to do so we are not informed. 
Innocent, so far as can be made out from his writings, was 
no heaven-born preacher, yet he would seem to have been 
very ready to exercise his gift, such as it was; it appears 



320 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

to have been his habit to explain himself in all the most 
important steps in life, and there could be no greater occa- 
sion than this. He stood on the steps of his throne in all 
the glory of his shining robes, over the dark and eager 
crowd, and there addressed to them a discourse in which 
the highest pretensions, yet the most humble faith, are 
conjoined, and which shows very clearly with what inten- 
tions and ideas he took upon himself the charge of Christen- 
dom, and supreme authority not only in the Church but in 
the world. He had been deeply agitated during the cere- 
monies of his consecration, shedding many tears ; but now 
he had recovered his composure and calm. 

There are four sermons existing among his works which 
bear the title In consecratione Romani Pontificis. Whether 
they were all written for this occasion, in repeated essays 
before he satisfied himself with what he had to say, is 
unknown. Perhaps some of them were used on the occasion 
of the consecration of other great dignitaries of the Church ; 
but this is merely conjecture. We have at all events under 
his own hand the thoughts which arose in the mind of such 
a man at the moment of such an elevation : the conception 
of his new and great dignity which he had formed and held 
with the faith of absolute conviction : and the purposes with 
which he began his work. His text, if text was necessary 
for so personal a discourse, was the words of our Lord : 
" Who then is that faithful and wise steward whom his lord 
shall make ruler over his household, to give them their por- 
tion of meat in due season ? " We quote of course from our 
own authorised version : the words of the Vulgate, used by 
Innocent, do not put this sentence in the form of a question. 
His examination of the meaning of the word " house " is the 
first portion of the argument. 

" He has constituted in the fulness of his power the pre-eminence of 
the Holy See that no one may be so bold as to resist the order which 
He has established, as He has Himself said : ' Thou art Peter, and 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 321 

upon this stone I will build my Church ; and the gates of hell shall 
not prevail against it.' For as it is He who has laid the foundations 
of the Church, and is himself that foundation, the gates of hell could 
in nothing prevail against it. And this foundation is immovable : as 
says the Apostle, no man can lay another foundation than that which 
is laid, which is Jesus Christ. . . . This is the building set upon a 
rock of which eternal truth has said : ' The rain fell and the wind 
blew and beat upon that house ; but it stood fast, for it was built upon 
a rock,' that is to say, upon the rock of which the Apostle said : ' And 
this Rock was Christ.' It is evident that the Holy See, far from being 
weakened by adversity, is fortified by the divine promise, saying with 
the prophet : ' Thou hast led me by the way of affliction. ' It throws 
itself with confidence on that promise which the Lord has made to the 
Apostles: 'Behold I am with you always, even unto the end of the 
world.' Yes, God is with us, who then can be against us ? for this 
house is not of man but of God, and. still more of God made man : the 
heretic and the dissident, the evil-minded wolf endeavours in vain to 
waste the vineyard, to tear the robe, to smother the lamp, to extin- 
guish the light. But as was said by Gamaliel : ' If the work is of man 
it will come to naught ; if it is of God ye cannot overthrow it : lest 
haply ye should find that you are fighting against God.' The Lord is 
my trust. I fear nothing that men can do to me. I am the servant 
whom God has placed over His house ; may I be prudent and faithful 
so as to give the meat in due season ! " 

He then goes on to describe the position of the faithful 
steward. 

"I am placed over this house. God grant that I were as eminent 
by my merit as by my position. But it is all the more to the honour 
of the mighty Lord when He fulfils His will by a feeble servant ; for 
then all is to His glory, not by human strength but by force divine. 
Who am I, and what is my father's house, that I should be set over 
kings, that I should occupy the seat of honour ? for it is of me that 
the prophet has said, ' I have set thee over people and kingdoms, to 
tear and to destroy, to build and to plant. ' It is of me that the Apostle 
has said, ' I have given thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven ; 
whatsoever thou bindest on earth is bound in heaven.' And again it 
is to me (though it is said by the Lord to all the Apostles in common), 
' The sins which you remit on earth shall be remitted ; and those you 
retain shall be retained.' But speaking to Peter alone He said : ' That 
which thou bindest on earth shall be bound in heaven.' Peter may 
bind others but he cannot be bound himself. 

" You see now who is the servant placed over the house ; it is no other 
than the Vicar of Jesus Christ, the Successor of Peter. He is the in- 
termediary between God and men, beneath God, yet above men, much 
lower than God but more than men ; he judges all but is judged by 
none as the Apostle says : ' It is God who is my judge.' But he who 
is raised to the highest degree of consideration is brought down again 
by the functions of a servant that the humble may be raised up and 



322 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

greatness may be humiliated — for God resists the proud but gives 
grace to the humble. O greatest of wise counsels — the greater you 
are the more profoundly must you humble yourself before them all ! 
You are there as a light on a candlestick that all in the house may see ; 
when that light becomes dark, how thick then is the darkness ? You 
are the salt of the earth : when that salt becomes without savour, with 
what will you be seasoned ? It is good for nothing but to be thrown 
out and trodden under foot of men. For this reason much is demanded 
from him to whom much is given." 

Thus Innocent began his career, solemnly conscious of 
the greatness of his position. But the reader will perceive 
that nothing could be more evangelical than his doctrine. 
Exalting as he does the high claims of Peter, he never falls 
into the error of supposing him to be the Bock on which 
the foundations of the Church are laid. On the other hand 
his idea of the Pope as beneath God but above men, lower 
than God but greater than men, is startling. The angel 
who stopped St. John in his act of worship proclaiming 
himself one of the Apostles' brethren the prophets, made 
no such pretension. But Innocent was strong in the con- 
sciousness that he himself, the arbiter on earth of all re- 
ward and punishment, was the judge of angels as well as 
men, and held a higher position than any of them in the 
hierarchy of heaven. 

The first act of Innocent's papacy was the very legitimate 
attempt to establish his own authority and independence at 
home. The long subsistence of the idea that only a Pope- 
king with enough of secure temporal ascendency to keep 
him free at least from the influence of other sovereigns, 
could be safe in the exercise of his spiritual functions — is 
curious when we think of the always doubtful position of 
the Popes, who up to this time and indeed for long after 
retained the most unsteady footing in their own metropolis, 
the city which derived all its importance from them. The 
Boman citizens took many centuries to learn — if they 
were ever taught — that the seat of a great institution like 
the Church, the court of a monarch who claimed authority 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 323 

in every quarter of the world, was a much, more important 
thing than a mere Italian city, however distinguished by 
the memories and relics of the past. We doubt much 
whether the great Innocent, the most powerfid of the Popes, 
had more real control over the home and centre of his 
supposed dominions at the outset of his career than Pope 
Leo XIIL, dispossessed and self-imprisoned, has now, or 
might have if he chose. No one can doubt that Innocent 
chose — and that with all the strength and will of an un- 
usually powerful character — to be master in his own house : 
and he succeeded by times in the effort; but, like other 
Popes, he was at no time more than temporarily successful. 
Twice or oftener he was driven by the necessity of circum- 
stances, if not by actual violence, out of the city : and 
though he never altogether lost his hold upon it, as several 
of his predecessors had done, it was at the cost of much 
trouble and exertion, and at the point of the sword, that he 
kept his place in Pome. 

He was, however, in the first flush of his power, almost 
triumphant. He succeeded in changing the fluctuating con- 
stitution of the Poman commonwealth, which had been 
hitherto presided over by a Praefect, responsible to the Em- 
peror and bound to his service, along with a vague body of 
senators, sometimes larger, sometimes smaller in number, 
and swayed by every popular demonstration or riot — the 
very best machinery possible for the series of small revolu- 
tions and changes of policy in which Pome delighted. It 
was in every way the best thing for the interests of the 
city that it should have learnt to accept the distinction, all 
others having perished, of being the seat of the Church. 
For Pome was by this time, as may be said, the general 
court of appeal for Europe ; every kind of cause was tried 
over again before the Consistory or its delegates ; and a 
crowd of appellants, persons of all classes and countries, 
were always in Pome, many of them completely without 



824 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

acquaintance in the place, and dependent only upon such 
help and guidance as money could procure, money which 
has always been the great object of desire to most com- 
munities, the means of grandeur and greatness, if also of 
much degradation. It must not be supposed, however, that 
the Pope took advantage of any such mean motive to bind 
the city to himself. He guarded against the dangers of 
such a situation indeed, by a strenuous endeavour to clear 
his court, his palace, his surroundings, of all that was 
superfluous in the way of luxury, all that was merely osten- 
tatious in point of attendants and services, and all that was 
mercenary among the officials. When he succeeded in 
transferring the allegiance of the Prefect from the Emperor 
to himself, he made at the same time the most stringent 
laws against the reception of any present or fee by that 
Praefect and his subordinate officers, thus securing, so far as 
was possible, the integrity of the city and its rulers as well 
as their obedience. And whether in the surprise of the 
community to be so summarily dealt with, or in its satis- 
faction with the amount of the present, which Innocent, 
like all the other Popes, bestowed on the city on his conse- 
cration, he succeeded in carrying out these changes without 
opposition, and so secured before he went further a certain 
shelter and security within the walls of Rome. 

He then turned his eyes to the States of the Church, the 
famous patrimony of St. Peter, which at that period of his- 
tory St. Peter was very far from possessing. Certain Ger- 
man adventurers, to whom the Emperor had granted the fiefs 
which Innocent claimed as belonging to the Holy See, were 
first summoned to do homage to the Pope as their suzerain, 
then threatened with excommunication, then laid under 
anathema : and finally — Markwald and the rest remaining 
unconvinced and unsubdued — were driven out of their ill- 
gotten lands by force of arms, which proved the most 
effectual way. The existence of these German lords was 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 325 

the strongest argument in favour of the Papal sway, and 
was efficacious everywhere. The towns little and great, 
scattered over the March of Ancona, the duchy of Spoleto, 
and the wealthy district of Umbria, received the Pope and 
his envoys as their deliverers. The Tedeschi were as 
fiercely hated in Italy in the twelfth century as they were 
in recent times ; and with greater reason, for their cruelty 
and exactions were indescribable. And the civic spirit which 
in the absence of any larger patriotism kept the Italian race 
in energetic life, and produced in every little centre of 
existence a longing for at least municipal liberty and inde- 
pendence, hailed with acclamations the advent of the head 
of the Church, a suzerain at least more honourable and more 
splendid than the rude Teuton nobles who despised the race 
over which they ruled. 

That spirit had already risen very high in the more im- 
portant cities of Northern Italy. The Lombard league had 
been already in existence for a number of years, and a simi- 
lar league was now formed by the Tuscan towns which 
Innocent also claimed, in right of the legacy made to the 
Church more than a hundred years before by the great 
Countess Matilda, the friend of Hildebrand, but which had 
never yet been secured to the Holy See. The Tuscans had 
not been very obedient vassals to Matilda herself in her day ; 
and they were not likely perhaps to have afforded much 
support to the Popes had the Church ever entered into full 
enjoyment of Matilda's splendid legacy. But in the common 
spirit of hatred against the Tedeschi, the cruel and fierce 
German chiefs to whom the Emperor had freely disposed of 
the great estates and castles and rich towns of that wonder- 
ful country, the supremacy of the Church was accepted 
joyfully for the moment, and all kinds of oaths taken and 
promises made of fidelity and support to the new Pope. 
When Innocent appeared, as in the duchy of Spoleto, in 
Perugia, and other great towns, he was received with joy as 



326 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

the saviour of the people. We are not told whether he 
visited Assisi, where at this period Francis of that city was 
drawing crowds of followers to his side, and the idea of a 
great monastic order was rising out of the little church, the 
Portiuncula, at the bottom of the hill : but wherever he went 
he was received with joy. At Perugia, when the papal 
procession streamed through the crowded gates, and reached 
the old palazzo appropriated for its lodging, there suddenly 
sprang up a well which had been greatly wanted in the place, 
a spring of fresh water henceforward and for ever known as 
the Fontana di Papa. These cities all joined the Tuscan 
league against the Germans with the exception of Pisa, 
always arrogant and self-willed, which stood for those same 
Germans perhaps because their rivals on every side were 
against them. It was at this period, some say, and that 
excellent authority Muratori among them, that the titles of 
Guelf and Ghibelline first came into common use, the party 
of the Pope being Guelf, and that of the empire Ghibelline 
— the one derived from the house of Este, which was de- 
scended from the old Teutonic race of Guelf on the female 
side, the other, Waiblingen, from that of Hohenstauf en, also 
descended by the female side from a traditionary German 
hero. It is curious that these distant ancestors should have 
been chosen as godfathers of a struggle with which they had 
nothing to do, and which arose so long after their time. 

Innocent, however, was not so good a Guelf as his party, 
for the Pope was the guardian and chief defender, during 
his troubled royal childhood, of Frederic of Sicily, after- 
wards the Emperor Frederic II., but at the beginning of 
Pope Innocent's reign a very helpless baby prince, father- 
less, and soon, also, motherless, and surrounded by rapa- 
cious Germans, each man fighting for a scheme of his own, 
by which to transfer the insecure crown to his own head, 
or at least to rob it of both power and revenue. The Pope 
stood by his helpless ward with much steadfastness through 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 329 

the very brief years of his minority — for Frederic seems 
to have been a married man and ambitious autocrat at an 
age when ordinary boys are but beginning their studies 
— and had a large share eventually in his elevation to 
the imperial throne: notwithstanding that he belonged to 
the great house which had steadily opposed the claims 
of the Papacy for generations. It must be added, however, 
that the great enterprises of Innocent's first years could 
not have been taken up, or at least could not have been 
carried to so easy and summary a conclusion — whole coun- 
tries recovered, the Emperor's nominees cast out, the cities 
leagued against their constant invaders and oppressors — 
had there been a fierce Emperor across i monti ready to 
descend upon the always struggling, yet continually con- 
quered, Italy. Henry VI., the son of Barbarossa, had died 
in the preceding year, 1198, in the flower of his age, leav- 
ing only the infant Frederic, heir to the kingdom of Sicily 
in right of his mother, behind him to succeed to his vast 
possessions. But the crown of Germany was, at least nom- 
inally, elective not hereditary; and notwithstanding that 
the Emperor had procured from his princes a delusive oath 
of allegiance to his child, that was a thing which in those 
days no one so much as thought of keeping. The inac- 
tivity of the forces of the Empire was thus accounted for ; 
the holders of imperial fiefs in Italy were left to fight their 
own battles, and thus the Pope with very moderate forces, 
and the cities of Tuscany and Umbria, each for its own 
hand, were able to assert themselves, and drive out the 
oppressors. And there was a period of hopefulness and 
comparative peace. 

Innocent, however, who had the affairs of the world on 
his hands, and could not long confine himself to those of 
St. Peter's patrimony, was soon plunged into the midst of 
those ever-recurring struggles in Germany, too important 
in every way not to call for his closest attention. The 



330 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

situation was very much the same as that in which Greg- 
ory VII. had found himself involved : with this great dif- 
ference, however, that both competitors for the German 
crown were new men, and had neither any burden of crime 
against the Church nor previous excommunications on their 
head. Philip of Suabia, the brother of Henry VI., had 
been by him entrusted — with that curious confidence in 
the possibility of self-devotion on the part of others, which 
dying men, though never capable of it themselves, so often 
show — with the care and guardianship of his child and its 
interests, and the impossible task of establishing Frederic, 
as yet scarcely able to speak, upon a throne so important 
and so difficult. Philip did, it is said, his best to fulfil his 
trust and hurried from Sicily to the heart of Germany as 
soon as his brother was dead, with that object; but the 
princes of his party feared an infant monarch, and he was 
himself elected in the year 1199 to the vacant seat. There 
seems no criminality in this in the circumstances, for the 
little Frederic was in any case impossible ; but Philip had 
inherited a hatred which he had not done anything per- 
sonally to deserve. " So exasperated were the Italians 
against the Germans by the barbarous' government of Fred- 
eric I. and Henry VI. his son, that wherever Philip passed, 
whether through Tuscany or any other district, he was ill- 
used and in danger of his life, and many of his companions 
were killed," says Muratori. He had thus a strong feeling 
against him in Italy independent of any demerit of his own. 
It is a little difficult, however, to understand why Pope 
Innocent, so careful of the interests of the little king in 
Sicily, should have so strongly and persistently opposed his 
uncle. Philip had been granted possession of the duchy 
of Tuscany, which the Pope claimed as his own, and some 
offence on this account, as well as the shadow of an anath- 
ema launched against him for the same reason by one of 
Innocent's predecessors, may have prepossessed the Pope 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 331 

against Mm ; but it is scarcely possible to accept this as 
reason enough for his determined opposition. 

The rival emperor Otho, elected by the Guelf party, was 
the son of Henry the Lion, the nephew of Richard Plan- 
tagenet of England the Coeur de Lion of our national story, 
and of a family always devoted to the Church. The two 
men were both young and full of promise, equally noble 
and of great descent, related to each other in a distant 
degree, trained in a similar manner, each of them quite fit 
for the place which they were called to occupy. It seems to 
the spectator now as if there was scarcely a pin to choose 
between them. Nor was it any conflict of personal ambi- 
tion which set them up against each other. They were the 
choice of their respective parties, and the question was as 
clearly one of faction against faction as in an Irish village 
fight. 

These were circumstances, above all others, in which the 
arbitration of such an impartial judge as a Pope might have 
been of the greatest advantage to the world. There never 
was perhaps such an ideal opportunity for testing the ad- 
vantage and the possibility of the power claimed by the 
Papacy. Otho was a young gallant at Richard's court 
expecting nothing of the kind, open to all kinds of other 
promotions, Earl of Yorkshire, Count of Poitou — the first 
not successful because he could not conciliate the York- 
shiremen, perhaps difficult in that way then as now: but 
without, so far as appears, any thought of the empire in his 
mind. And Philip had the right of possession, and was the 
choice of the majority, and had done no harm in accepting 
his election, even if he had no right to it. The case was 
quite different from that of the similar struggle in which 
Gregory VII. took part. At the earlier period the whole 
world, that was not crushed under his iron foot, had risen 
against Henry IV. His falsehood, his cruelty, his vices, had 
alienated every one, and nobody believed his word or put 



832 THE MAKERS OE MODERN ROME. [chap. 

the smallest faith even in his most solemn vows. The strug- 
gle between such an Emperor and the head of the Church 

was naturally a struck) to death. One might almost say 
they wore; the impersonations of good and evil, notwith- 
standing that the good might be often alloyed, and the evil 
perhaps by times showed gleams of better moaning. Hut 
the case of Philip and Otho was completely different. 
Neither of them were bad men nor gave any augury of 
evil. The one perhaps by training and inclination was 
slightly a better Churchman than the other at the begin- 
ning of Ins career; but, on the other hand, I'hilip had 
various practical advantages over Otho which could not be 
gainsaid. 

Had Pope Innocent been the wholly wise man and in- 
spired judge he claimed by right of his ollice to be, without 
prejudice or bias, nobly impartial, holding the balance in a 
steady hand, was not this the very case to test his powers? 
Had he helped the establishment of I'hilip in the empire 
and deprecated the introduction of a rival, a great deal of 
bloodshed might have been avoided, and a satisfactory 
result, without any injustice, if not an ideal selection, 
might have been obtained. Ml this was problematical, 
and depended upon his power of getting himself obeyed, 
which, as it turned out, he did not possess. Hut in this 
way, in all human probability, he might have promoted peace 
and secured a peaceful decision; for Philip's election was a 
fail, accom/rti, while Otho was not as yet more than a can- 
didate. The men were so equal otherwise, and there was 
so little exclusive right on one side or the other, that such 
Tacts as these would naturally have been taken into the 
most serious consideration by the great, impartial, and un- 
biassed mind which alone could have- justified the interfer- 
ence of the Pope, or qualified him to assume the part of 
arbitrator in such a quarrel. He did not attempt this, how- 
ever, but took his place with his own faction as if he had 



iv.] INNOCENT HI. 833 

been no heaven-sent arbiter at all, but a man like any other. 
He has himself set forth the motives and reasons for his 
interference, with the fulness of explanation which he loved. 
The bull in which tie begins by setting aside the claims of 

his own infant ward, Frederic, to whom his father Henry 
had caused the German princes to swear fealty, as inad- 
missible — the said princes being freed of their oath by the 
death of the Fmperor, a curious conclusion is in groat part 
an indictment of Philip, couched in the strongest and most 
energetic terms. In this document it is stated in the first 
place that Philip had been excommunicated by the previous 
Pope, as having occupied by violence the patrimony of St. 
Peter, an excommunication taken off by the legate, but not 
effectually; again he was involved in the excommunication 
of Markwald and the other invaders of Sicily whom In; had 
upheld; in the next place he had been false to the little 
Frederic, whose right he had vowed to defend, and was 
thus perjured, though the princes who had sworn allegiance 
to the child were not so. Then follows a tremendous 
description of Philip's family and predecessors, of their 
dreadful acts against the, Popes and Church, of the feuds 
of Barbarossa with the Holy See, of the insult:; and injuries 
of which all had been equally guilty. A persecutor himself 
and the son of persecutors, how could the Pope support 
the cause of Philip? The argument is full of force and 
strengthened by many illustrations, but it proves above all 
things that Innocent was no impartial judge,, but a man 
holding almost with passion to his own side. 

The pleas in favour of Otho are much weaker, ft is true, 
the Pope admits, that he had been elected by a minority, 
but then the number of notable and important electors wore 
as great on his side as on Philip's: his house had a purer 
record than that of Philip: and finally he was weaker than 
Philip and more in need of support; therefore the Holy See 
threw all its influence upon his side. Nothing could be 



336 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap, 

for example, who, it is well known, had the evil eye. For 
no sooner had Innocent taken this step than Philip's life 
came to a disastrous end. The Count Palatine of Wittels- 
bach, a great potentate of Germany, who had some personal 
grievance to avenge, demanded a private audience and mur- 
dered him in his temporary dwelling, in the moment of his 
highest prosperity. Thus in the twinkling of an eye every- 
thing was changed. The House of Hohenstaufen went 
down in a moment without an attempt made to prop it up. 
And Otho, who was at hand, already a crowned king, and 
demanding no further trouble, at once took the vacant place. 
This occurred in the year 1208 — ten years after the begin- 
ning of the struggle, But in this extraordinary and sudden 
transformation of affairs Innocent counted for nothing; he 
had not clone it nor even contributed to the doing of it: 
though he had kept the air thunderous with anathemas, and 
the roads dusty with the coming and going of his legates 
for all these unhappy years. 

Otho, however, did not at first forget the devotion which 
the Pope had shown him in his evil days, when triumph so 
unexpected and accidental (as it seemed) came to him. 
After taking full possession of the position which now 
there was no one to contest with him, he made a triumphal 
progress across the Alps, and was crowned Emperor at 
Kome, the last and crowning dignity which Philip had 
never been able to attain: where he behaved himself with 
much show of affection and humility to Innocent, whose 
stirrup he held like the most devoted son of the Church as 
he professed to be. There was much swearing of oaths at 
the same time. Otho vowed to preserve all the rights of 
the Church, and, with reservations, to restore the Tuscan 
fiefs of Matilda, and all the presents with which from time 
to time the former Emperors had endowed the Holy See, 
to the Pope's undisturbed possession. Eome was a scene 
of the utmost display and splendour during this imperial 



iv.] INNOCENT in. 337 

visit. Otho liad come at the head of his army, and lay 
encamped at the foot of Monte Mario, where now the little 
group of pines stand up against the sky in the west, dark 
against the setting sun. It was October when all the sum- 
mer glow and heat is mellowed by autumnal airs, and the 
white tents shone outside the city gates with every kind of 
splendid cognisance of princes and noble houses, and mag- 
nificence of mediaeval luxury. The ancient St. Peter's, 
near the camp, was then planted, we are told, in the midst 
of a great number of convents, churches, and chapels, " Like 
a majestic mother surrounded by beautiful daughters " — 
though there was no Vatican as yet to add to its greatness : 
but the line of the walls on the opposite side of the river 
and the ancient splendour of Rome, more square and mas- 
sive in its lingering classicism than the mediaeval towns to 
which the German forces were more accustomed, shone in 
the mid-day sun : while towards the left the great round of 
St. Angelo dominated the bridge and the river, and all the 
crowds which poured forth towards the great church and 
shrine of the Apostles. There was, however, one shadow 
in this brilliant picture, and that was the fact that Rome 
within her gates lay not much unlike a couching lion, half 
terrified, half excited by the army outside, and not sure 
that the abhorred Tedeschi might not at any moment steal 
a march upon her, and show underneath those splendid vel- 
vet gloves, all heavy with embroideries of gold, the claws 
of that northern wolf which Italy had so often felt at her 
very heart. It is a curious sign of this state of agitated 
feeling that Otho published in Rome before his coronation 
a solemn engagement in his own name and that of his army 
that no harm should be clone to the city, to the Pope and 
Cardinals, or to the people and their property, while he 
remained there. He had strong guards of honour at all the 
adjacent gates as a precautionary measure while the great 
ceremonies of his consecration went on. 



334 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

feebler than this conclusion after the force of the hostile 
judgments. We fear it must be allowed that Innocent 
being merely a man (which is the one unsurmountable argu- 
ment against papal infallibility) went the way his prepos- 
sessions and inclinations — and also, we have no doubt, his 
conviction of what was best — led him, and was no more 
certain to be right in doing so than any other man. 

Having come to this conclusion, Innocent took his stand 
with all the power and influence he possessed upon Otho's 
side — a support which probably kept that prince afloat and 
made the long struggle possible, but was quite inadequate 
to set him effectually on the throne, or injure his rival in 
any serious way. In this partisan warfare, excommunica- 
tion was the readiest of weapons ; but excommunications, as 
we have already said, were very ineffectual in the greater 
number of cases ; for Germany especially was full of great 
prelates as great as the princes, in most cases of as high 
race and as much territorial power, and they by no means 
always agreed with the Pope, and made no pretence of 
obeying him ; and how was the people to find out that they 
lay under anathema when they saw the offices of the Church 
carried on with all the splendour of the highest ritual, its 
services unbroken, however the Pope might thunder behind ? 
Some of these prelates — such as Leopold of Mainz, ap- 
pointed by the Emperor, to whom Innocent refused his 
sanction, electing on his own part another archbishop, 
Siegfried, in his stead, who was not for many years per- 
mitted even to enter the diocese of which he was the titular 
head — maintained with Rome a struggle as obstinate as 
any secular prince. They were as powerful as the princes 
among whom they sat and reigned, and elected emperors. 
Most of the German bishops, we are told, were on Philip's 
side notwithstanding the decision of the Pope against him. 
In such circumstances the anathema was little more than a 
farce. The Archbishop of Mainz was excommunicated as 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 335 

much as the emperor, but being all the same in full posses- 
sion of his see and its privileges, naturally acted as though 
nothing had happened, and found plenty of clergy to sup- 
port him, who carried on the services of the Church as 
usual and administered the sacraments to Philip as much as 
if he had been in the full sunshine of Papal favour. 

Such a chance had surely never been foreseen when the 
expedient of excommunication was first thought of, for it 
is apt to turn every claim of authority into foolishness — 
threats which cannot be carried out being by their nature 
the most derogatory things possible to the person from 
whom they proceed. The great prelates of Germany were 
in their way as important as the Pope, their position was 
more steadily powerful than his, they had vassals and armies 
to defend them, and a strong and settled seat, from which 
it was as difficult, or indeed even dangerous, to displace 
them as to overthrow a throne. And what could the Pontiff 
do when they disobeyed and defied him ? Nothing but 
excommunicate, excommunicate, for which they cared not a 
straw — or depose, which was equally unimportant, when, 
as happened in the case of Mainz, the burghers of the 
cathedral city vowed that the substituted bishop should 
never enter their gates. 

Thus the ten years' struggle produced nothing but humil- 
iation for Innocent. The Pope did not relax in his deter- 
mined opposition, nor cease to threaten penalties which he 
could not inflict until nearly the end of the struggle ; and 
then when the logic of events began, it would appear, to have 
a little effect upon his mind, and he extended with reluc- 
tance a sort of feeble olive-branch towards the all-victorious 
Philip — a larger fate came in, and changed everything with 
the sweeping fulness of irresistible power. It is not said 
anywhere, so far as we know, that the overtures of Innocent 
brought the Emperor ill-luck ; but it would certainly have 
been so said had such an accident occurred under Pio Nono, 



338 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

It was not the present St. Peter's, it need not be said, 
which, hung with splendid tapestries and lit with innumer- 
able candles, glistening with precious marbles and gilding, 
and decorated with all the splendour of the church in silver 
and gold, received this great German potentate for that 
final act which was to make his authority sacred, and estab- 
lish him beyond all question Emperor of the Holy Eoman 
Empire, a dignity which only the Pope could complete, 
which was nothing, bringing no additional dominion with 
it, yet of the utmost importance in the estimation of the 
world. It cannot but have been that a sense of elation, 
perhaps chequered with doubt, but certainly sanctioned by 
many noble feelings — convictions that God had favoured 
his side in the long run, and that a better age was about to 
begin — must have been in Innocent's mind as he went 
through the various ceremonies of the imposing ritual, and 
received the vows of the monarch and placed the imperial 
crown on his head. We are not told, however, whether 
there was any alarm in the air as the two gorgeous proces- 
sions conjoined, sweeping forth from the gates of St. 
Peter's, and across the bridge and by all the crowded ways, 
to the other side of the city, to the Lateran palace, where 
the great banquet was held. Otho with his crown on his 
head held the stirrup of the Pope at the great steps of St. 
Peter's as Innocent mounted; and the two greatest poten- 
tates of earth, the head of the secular and the head of the 
spiritual, dividing, with the most confusing elasticity of 
boundary between them, the sway of the world, rode alone 
together, followed by all that was most magnificent in Ger- 
many and Italy, the great princes, the great prelates vying 
with each other in pomp and splendour. The air was full 
of the ringing of bells and the chanting of the priests ; and 
as they went along through the dark masses of the people 
on every side, the officers of Otho scattered largesse through 
all the crowded streets, and everything was festivity and 
general joy. 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 339 

But when the great people disappeared into the papal 
palace, and the banquet was spread, the German men-at- 
arms began to swagger about the streets as if they were 
masters of all they surveyed. There is no difference of 
opinion as to the brutality and insolence of the German 
soldiers in those days, and the Romans were excited and 
in no humour to accept any insult at such a moment. How 
they came to blows at last was never discovered, but after 
the great spectacle was over, most probably when night 
was coming on, and the excitement of the day had risen to 
irritability and ready passion, a fray arose in the streets 
no one knowing how. The strangers had the worst of it, 
Muratori says. " Many of the Teutons were killed," says 
one of the older chronicles, " and eleven hundred horses ; " 
which would seem to imply that the dregs of the procession 
had been vapouring about Rome on their charges, riding 
the inhabitants down. 1ST or was it only men-at-arms : for a 
number of Otho's more distinguished followers were killed 
in the streets. How long it was before it came to the ears 
of the Emperor we are not informed, nor whether the ban- 
quet was interrupted. Probably Otho had returned to his 
tent (Muratori says he did so at once, leaving out all men- 
tion of any banquet) before the " calda baruffa " broke out : 
but at all events it was a startling change of scene. The 
Emperor struck his tents next morning, and departed from 
the neighbourhood of Rome in great rage and indignation: 
— and this, so far as Pope Innocent was concerned, was the 
last good that was ever heard of Otho. He broke all his 
vows one by one, took back the Tuscan States, seized the 
duchy of Spoleto and every city he passed on his way, and 
defied the Pope, to whom he had been so servile, having 
now got all from him that Innocent could give. 

The plea by which Otho defended himself for his seizure 
of the States of Tuscany was worthy of that scholastic age. 
He had vowed, he said, it was true, to preserve St. Peter's 



340 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

patrimony and all the ecclesiastical possessions : but he had 
vowed at the same time to preserve and to recover all impe- 
rial rights and possessions, and it was in discharge of this 
obligation that he robbed the Pope. Thus ended Innocent's 
long and faithful support of Otho ; he had pledged the faith 
of heaven for his success, which was assured only by acci- 
dent and crime ; but no sooner had that success been secured, 
than the Emperor deserted and betrayed the Pope who had 
so firmly stood by him. It is said that Innocent redoubled 
from that moment his care of the young Frederic, the King 
of Sicily, the head of the Hohenstaufen house and party, and 
prepared him to revenge Otho's broken oaths by a downfall 
as complete as his elevation had been ; but this is an assump- 
tion which has no more proof than any other uncharitable 
judgment of motives unrevealed. At all events it is very 
apparent that in this long conflict, which occupied so much 
of his life, the Pope played no powerful or triumphant part. 
In France the action of Innocent was more successful. 
The story of Philip Augustus and his wives, which is full 
of romantic incidents, is better known to the general reader 
than the tragedy of the Emperors. Philip Augustus had 
married a wife, a Danish princess, who did not please him. 
Her story, in its first chapter at least, is like that of Anne 
of Cleves, the fortunate princess who had the good luck not 
to please Henry VIII. (or perhaps still more completely 
resembles a comparatively recent catastrophe in our own 
royal house, the relations of George IV. and his unlucky 
wife). But the French king did not treat Ingelburga with 
the same politeness which Henry Tudor exhibited, neither 
had she the discretion to hold her tongue like the lady of 
Flanders. The complaints of the injured queen filled the 
world, and she made a direct appeal to the Pope, who was 
not slow to reply. When Philip 'procured a divorce from 
his wife from the complacent bishops of his own kingdom 
on one of those absurd allegations of too close relationship 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 341 

(it might be that of third or fourth cousin), which were of 
so much use to discontented husbands of sufficient rank, and 
married the beautiful Agnes of Meran, with whom he was 
in love, Innocent at once interfered. He began by com- 
mands, by entreaties, by attempts at settling the question by 
legal measures, commissioning his legates to hold a solemn 
inquiry into the matter, examining into Ingelburga's com- 
plaints, and using every endeavour to bring the king back to 
a sense of his duty. There could be no doubt on which side 
justice lay, and the legates were not, as in the case of Henry 
and Catherine, on the side of the monarch. It was the re- 
jected queen who had the Pope's protection and not her 
powerful husband. 

Philip Augustus, however, was summoned in vain to obey. 
The litigation and the appeals went on for a long time, and 
several years elapsed before Innocent, after much prepa- 
ration and many warnings, determined not merely as on 
former occasions to excommunicate the offender, but to pro- 
nounce an interdict upon the kingdom. Perhaps Innocent 
had learned the lesson which had been taught him on such 
a great scale, that excommunication was not a fortunate 
weapon, and that only the perfect subordination of the 
higher clergy could make it successful at all. The interdict 
was a much greater and more dreadful thing; it was de- 
pendent not upon the obedience of a great prelate, but upon 
every priest who had taken the sacred vows. Had he ex- 
communicated the king as on former occasions, no doubt 
there would always have been some lawless bishop in France 
who would have enabled his sovereign to laugh at the Pope 
and his sentence. But an interdict could not thus be evaded, 
the mass of the clergy being obedient to the Pope whatever 
important individual exceptions there might be. The inter- 
dict was proclaimed accordingly with all the accessories 
of ritualistic solemnity. After a Council which had lasted 
seven days, and which was attended by a great number of 



342 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

the clergy, the bells of the cathedral — it was that of Dijon 
— began to toll as for a dying man : and all the great bishops 
with their trains, and the legate at their head, went solemnly 
from their council chamber to the church. It was midnight, 
and the long procession went through the streets and into 
the great cathedral by the wavering and gloomy light of 
torches. For the last time divine service was celebrated, 
and the canons sang the Kyrie Eleison amid the silence, 
faintly broken by sobs and sounds of weeping, of the im- 
mense crowds who had followed them. The images of 
Christ and the saints were covered with crape, the relics of 
the saints, worshipped in those days with such strange de- 
votion, were solemnly taken . away out of the shrines and 
consecrated places to vaults and crypts underground where 
they were deposited until better times ; the remains of the 
consecrated bread which had sustained the miracle of tran- 
substantiation were burned upon the altar. All these details 
of the awful act of cutting off France from the community 
of the faithful were performed before a trembling and dis- 
mayed crowd, which looked on with a sense of the serious- 
ness of the proceedings which was overwhelming. 

' ' Then the legate, dressed in a violet stole, as on the day of the 
passion of our Lord, advanced to the altar steps, and in the name of 
Jesus Christ pronounced the interdict upon all the realm of France. 
Sobs and groans echoed through the great aisles of the cathedral ; it 
was as if the day of judgment had come." 

Once more after this tremendous scene there was a breath- 
ing space, a place of repentance left for the royal sinner, and 
then through all the churches of France the midnight cere- 
monial was repeated. The voice of prayer was silenced in 
the land, no more was psalm sung or mass said ; a few con- 
vents were permitted by special grace, in the night, with 
closed doors and whispering voices, to celebrate the holy 
mysteries. For all besides the public worship of God and 
all the consolations of religion were cut off. We have seen 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 343 

how lightly personal excommunication was treated in Ger- 
many ; but before so terrible a chastisement as this no king 
could hold out. Neither was the cause one of disobedience 
to the Holy See, or usurpation of the Church's lands, or any 
other offence against ecclesiastical supremacy : it was one 
into which every peasant, every clown could enter, and which 
revolted the moral sense of the nation. Matrimonial infidel- 
ities of all kinds have always been winked at in a monarch, 
but the strong step of putting away a guiltless queen and 
setting another in her place is a different matter. The 
nation was on the side of the Church : the clergy, except in 
very rare cases, were unanimous : and for once Innocent in 
his severity and supremacy was successful. After seven 
months of this terrible regime the king yielded. It had been 
a time of threatening rebellion, of feuds and dissensions of 
all kinds, of diminished revenues and failing prosperity. 
Philip Augustus could not stand against these consequences. 
He sent away the fictitious wife whom he loved — and who 
died, as the world, and even history at its sternest, loves to 
believe, of a broken heart, the one victim whom no one could 
save, a short time after — and the interdict was removed. 
One is almost glad to hear that even then the king would 
have none of Ingelburga, the woman who had filled the 
world with her cries and complaints, and brought this tre- 
mendous anathema on France. She continued to cry and 
appeal to the Pope that her captivity was unchanged or 
even made harder than ever, but Innocent was too wise to 
risk his great expedient a second time. He piously advised 
her to have recourse to prayer and to have confidence in 
God, and promised not to abandon her. But the poor lady 
gained little by all the misery that had been inflicted to 
right her wrongs. Many years after, when no one thought 
any more of Ingelburga, the king suddenly took her out of 
her prison and restored her to her share, such as it was, of 
the throne, for what reason no man can tell. 



344 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

This, however, was the only great success of Innocent in 
the exercise of his papal power. It was an honourable and 
a just employment of that power, very different from the 
claim to decide between contending Emperors, or to nomi- 
nate to the imperial crown ; but it was in reality, as we think, 
the only triumphant achievement of the Pope, in whom all 
the power and all the pretensions of the papacy are said to 
have culminated. He had his hand in every broil, and in- 
terfered with everything that was going on in every quarter. 
Space fails us to tell of his endless negotiations, censures, 
recommendations and commands, sent by legates continually 
in motion or by letters of endless frequency and force, to 
regions in which Christianity itself was as yet scarcely es- 
tablished. Every little kingdom from the utmost limits of 
the north to the east were under this constant supervision 
and interference : and no doubt there were instances, espe- 
cially among the more recent converts of the Church, and in 
respect to ecclesiastical matters, in which it was highly im- 
portant; but so far as concerned the general tenor of the 
world's history, it can never be said to have had any impor- 
tant result. 

In England, Innocent had the evil fortune to have to do 
with the worst of the Plantagenet kings, the false and cow- 
ardly John, who got himself a little miserable reputation 
for a time by the temporary determination of his resolve 
that " no Italian priest, should tithe or toll in our dominions," 
and who struggled fiercely against Innocent on the question 
of the Archbishopric of Canterbury and other great ecclesi- 
astical offices, as well as in matters more personal, such as 
the dower of Berengaria, the widow of Cceur de Lion, which 
the Pope had called upon him to pay. John drove the 
greater part of the clergy out of England in his fury at the 
interdict which Innocent pronounced, and took possession, 
glad of an occasion of acquiring so much wealth, of the 
estates and properties of the Church throughout the realm. 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 345 

But the interdict which had been so efficacious in France 
failed altogether of its effect in England. It was too early 
for any Protestant sentiment, and it is extraordinary that a 
people by no means without piety should have shown so 
singular an indifference to the judgment of the Church. 
Perhaps the fact that so many of the superior clergy were 
of the conquering Norman race, and, therefore, still sullenly 
resisted by the passive obstinacy of the humiliated Saxons, 
had something to do with it : while at the same time the 
banishment of many prelates would probably leave a large 
portion of the humbler priests in comparative ignorance of 
the Pope's decree. 

But whatever were the operative causes this is plain, that 
whereas in France the effect of the interdict was tremendous 
in England it produced scarcely any result at all. The 
banished bishops and archbishops, and at their head Stephen 
Langton, the patriotic Englishman of whom the Pope had 
made wise choice for the Archbishopric of Canterbury, stood 
on the opposite shore in consternation, and watched the con- 
tempt of their flocks for this greatest exercise of the power 
of Borne ; and with still greater amazement perceived the 
success that followed the king in his enterprises, and the 
obedience of the people, with whom he had never been so 
popular before. 

We are not told what Innocent felt at the sight of this 
unexpected failure. He proceeded to strike King John with 
special excommunication, going from the greater to the 
smaller curse, in a reversal of the usual method ; but this 
being still ineffectual, Innocent turned to practical measures. 
He proceeded to free King John's subjects from their oath 
of allegiance and to depose the rebellious monarch ; and not 
only so, for these ordinances would probably have been as 
little regarded as the other — but he gave permission and 
authority to the King of France, the ever- watchful enemy 
of the Plantagenets, to invade England and to place his son 



346 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

Louis upon the vacant throne. Great preparations were 
made in France for this congenial Crusade — for it was in 
their quality as Crusaders that the Pope authorised the 
invasion. Then and not till then John paused in his career. 
He had laughed at spiritual dangers, but he no longer 
laughed when the French king gathered his forces at 
Boulogne, and the banished and robbed bishops prepared to 
return, not penitent and humiliated, but surrounded by 
French spears. 

Then at last the terrified king submitted to the authority 
of the Pope ; he received the legates of Innocent in a 
changed spirit, with the servility of a coward. He vowed 
with his hand on the G-ospels to redress all ecclesiastical 
wrongs, to restore the bishops, and to submit in every way 
to the judgment of the Church. Then in his craven terror, 
without, it is said, any demand of the kind on the part of the 
ecclesiastical ambassadors, John took a step unparalleled 
in the annals of the nations. 

" In order to obtain the mercy of God for the sins we have done 
against His holy Church, and having nothing more precious to offer 
than our person and our kingdom, and in order to humiliate ourself 
before Him who humbled Himself for us even to death : by an inspira- 
tion of the Holy Spirit, neither formed by violence nor by fear, but in 
virtue of our own good and free will we give, with the consent of our 
barons, to God, to His holy apostles, Peter and Paul, to our mother 
the Holy Eoman Church, to our Lord the Pope Innocent and to his 
Catholic successors, in expiation of our sins and those of our family, 
living and dead, our kingdoms of England and Ireland with all their 
accompaniments and rights, in order that we may receive them again 
in the quality of vassal of God and of Holy Church : in faith of which 
we take the oath of vassal, in the presence of Pandulphus, putting our- 
selves at the disposition of the Pope and his successors, as if we were 
actually in the presence of the Pope ; and our heirs and successors 
shall be obliged to take the same oath." 

So John swore, but not because of the thunders and 
curses of Innocent — because of Philip Augustus of France 
hurrying on his preparations on the other side of the Chan- 
nel, while angry barons and a people worn out with constant 
exactions gave him promise of but poor support at home. 




■^ 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 349 

The Pope became now the only hope of the humiliated mon- 
arch. He had flouted the sentences and disdained the curses 
of the Holy See ; but if there was any power in the world 
which could restore the fealty of his vassals, and stop the 
invader on his way, it was Innocent : or so at least in this 
last emergency it might be possible to hope. 

Innocent on his part did not despise the unworthy bargain. 
Notwithstanding his powerful intellect and just mind, and 
the perception he must have had of the miserable motives 
underneath, he did not hesitate. He received the oath, 
though he must have well known that it would be so much 
waste paper if John had ever power to cast it off. Of all 
men Innocent must have been most clearly aware what was 
the worth of the oaths of kings. He accepted it, however, 
apparently with a faith in the possibility of establishing the 
suzerainty thus bestowed upon him, which is as curious as 
any other of the facts of the case, whether flattered by this 
apparent triumph after his long unsuccess, or believing 
against all evidence — as men, even Popes, can always believe 
what they wish — that so shameful a surrender was genuine, 
and that here at last was a just acknowledgment of the 
rights of the Holy See. Henceforward the Pope put him- 
self on John's side. He risked the alienation of the French 
king by forbidding the enterprise which had been under- 
taken at his command: he rejected the appeal of the barons, 
disapproved Magna Charta, transferred the excommunica- 
tion to its authors with an ease which surely must have 
helped these unlikely penitents to despise both the anath- 
ema and its source. It is impossible either to explain or 
excuse this strange conduct. The easiest solution is that 
he did not fully understand either the facts or the characters 
of those with whom he had to deal : but how then could he be 
considered fit to judge and arbitrate between them? 

The death of John liberated the Pope from what might 
have been a deliberate breach of his recommendations on the 



350 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

part of Prance. And altogether in this part of his conduct 
the imaginary success of Innocent was worse than a defeat. 
It was a failure from the high dignity he claimed, more con- 
spicuous even than that failure in Germany which had 
already proved the inefficacy of spiritual weapons to affect 
the business of the world : for not only had all his efforts 
failed of success, until the rude logic of a threatened inva- 
sion came in to convince the mind of John — but the Pope 
himself was led into unworthy acts by a bargain which was 
in every way ignoble and unworthy. If the Church was to 
be the high and generous umpire, the impartial judge of all 
imperial affairs which she claimed to be — and who can say 
that had mortal powers been able to carry it out, this was 
not a noble and splendid ideal ? — it was not surely by be- 
coming the last resort against just punishment of a traitor 
and caitiff, whose oath made one day was as easily revoked 
the next, as the putting on or pulling off of a glove. It is 
almost inconceivable that a man like Innocent should have 
received with joy and with a semblance of faith such a sub- 
mission on the part of such a man as John. But it is evi- 
dent that he did so, and that probably the Eoman court and 
community took it as a great event and overwhelming proof 
of the progress of the authority of the Church. 

But perhaps an Italian and a Churchman in these days 
was the last person in the world to form a just idea of what 
we call patriotism, or to understand the principle of inde- 
pendence which made a nation, even when divided within 
itself, unite in fierce opposition to interference from with- 
out. Italy was not a country, but a number of constantly 
warring states and cities, and to Innocent the Church was 
the one sole institution in the world qualified and entitled to 
legislate for others. He accepted the gift of England almost 
with elation, notwithstanding all he had learned of that dis- 
tant and strange country which cared not for an interdict, 
and if it could in any circumstances have loved its unworthy 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 351 

king, would have done so on account of his resistance to the 
Pope. And it would appear that the Pontiff believed in 
something serious coming of that suzerainty, all traditions 
and evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. Thus Inno- 
cent's part in the bloody and terrible drama that was then 
being played in England was neither noble nor dignified, 
but a poor part unworthy of his character and genius. His 
interference counted for nothing until France interfered 
with practical armies which had to be reckoned with — 
when the hand which had launched so many ineffectual 
thunderbolts was gripped at by an expedient of cowardly 
despair which in reality meant and produced nothing. Both 
sides were in their turn excommunicated, given over to every 
religious penalty; but unconcerned fought the matter out 
their own way and so settled it, unanimous only in resisting 
the jurisdiction of Pome. The vehement letters of the Pope 
as the struggle grew more and more bitter sound through 
the clang of arms like the impotent scoldings of a woman : 

" Let women . . . war with words, 
With curses priests, but men with swords." 

Let Pope or prelate do what they might, the cold steel car- 
ried the day. 

Not less complete in failure, through with a flattering 
promise in it of prosperity and advantage, was the great cru-. 
sade of Innocent's day — that which is called the Venetian 
Crusade, the immense expedition which seemed likely to 
produce such splendid results but ended so disastrously, and 
never set foot at all in the Holy Land which was its object. 
The Crusades were, of all other things, the dearest object to 
the hearts of the Popes, small and great. The first concep- 
tion of them had risen, as the reader will remember, in the 
mind of Gregory VII., who would fain have set out himself 
at the head of the first, to recover out of the hands of the 
infidel the sacred soil which enshrined so many memories. 



352 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

The idea had been pursued by every worthy Pope between 
Hildebrand and Innocent, with fluctuations of success and 
failure — at first in noble and pious triumph, but latterly 
with all the dissensions, jealousies, and internal struggles, 
which armies, made up of many differing and antagonis- 
tic nationalities, could with difficulty avoid. Before Inno- 
cent's accession to the papacy there had been a great and 
terrible reverse, which was supposed to have broken the 
heart of the old Pope under whom it occurred, and which 
filled Christendom with horror, woe, and shame. The sacred 
territory for which so much blood had been shed fell again 
entirely into the hands of the Saracens. In consequence 
of this, one of the first acts of Innocent was to send out let- 
ters over all the world, calling for a new Crusade, exhorting 
princes and priests alike -to use every means for the rais- 
ing of a sufficient expedition, and promising every kind of 
spiritual advantage, indulgence, and remission to those who 
took the cross. 

The first result of these impassioned appeals was to fire 
the spirits of certain priests in France to preach the Crusade, 
with all the fiery enthusiasm which had first roused Chris- 
tendom: and a very large expedition was got together, 
chiefly from France, whose preliminary negotiations with 
the doge and government of Venice to convey them to Pales- 
tine furnishes one of the most picturesque scenes in the 
history of that great and astute republic. It was in the be- 
ginning of the thirteenth century, the opening of the year 
1201, when the bargain, which was a very hard one, was 
made : and in the following July the expedition was to set 
sail. But when the pilgrims assembled at Venice it was found 
that with all their exertions they had not more than half 
the sum agreed upon as passage money. Perhaps the Vene- 
tians had anticipated this and taken their measures accord- 
ingly. At all events, after much wrangling and many delays, 
they agreed to convey the Crusaders on condition only of 



iv.] INNOCENT HI. 353' 

obtaining their assistance to take the town of Zara on the 
Dalmatian coast, which had once been under Venetian rule, 
but which now belonged to the King of Hungary, and was 
a nest of pirates hampering the trade of Venice and holding 
her merchants and seamen in perpetual agitation. Whether 
Innocent had surmised that some such design was possible 
we are not told, but if not his instructions to the Crusaders 
were strangely prophetic. He besought them on no account 
whatever to go to war with any Christian people. If their 
passage were opposed by any, they were permitted to force 
their way through that like any other obstacle, but even in 
such a case were only to act with the sanction of the legate 
who accompanied them. The Pope added a word of sor- 
rowful comment upon the " very different aims " which so 
often mingled in the minds of the Crusaders with that great 
and only one, the deliverance of the Holy Land, which was 
the true object of their expedition; and complained sadly 
that if the heads of the Christian Church had possessed as 
much power as they had goodwill, the power of Mahomet 
would have been long since broken, and much Christian 
blood remained unshed. 

He could not have spoken with more truth had he been 
prophetically aware of the issues to which that expedition 
was to come. The Crusaders set out, in 1202, covering the 
sea with their sails, dazzling every fishing boat and curious 
merchantman with reflections from their shining bucklers 
and shields, and met with such a course of adventure as 
never had befallen any pilgrims of the Cross before. The 
story is told in the most picturesque and dramatic pages of 
Gibbon ; and many a historian more has repeated the tale. 
They took Zara, and embroiled themselves, as the Pope had 
feared, with the Hungarians, themselves a chivalrous nation 
full of enthusiasm for the Cross, but not likely to allow 
themselves to be invaded with impunity ; then, professedly 
in the cause of the young Alexis, the boy-king of the Greek 

2 A 



354 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

Empire, went to Constantinople — which, they took after a 
wonderful siege, and in which they found such booty as 
turned the heads of the great penniless lords who had mort- 
gaged every acre and spent every coin for the hire of the 
Venetian ships, and of the rude soldiers who followed them, 
who had never possessed a gold piece probably in their lives, 
and there found wealth undreamt of to be had for the taking. 
There is no need for us to enter into that extraordinary 
chapter in the history of the Greek Empire, of which these 
hordes of northern invaders, all Christian as they were, and 
with so different an object to start with, possessed them- 
selves — with no less cruelty and as great rapacity as was 
shown by the barbarians of an elder age in the sack and 
destruction of Rome. 

Meantime the Pope did not cease to protest against this 
turning aside of the expedition from its lawful object. The 
legate had forbidden the assault of Zara, but in vain ; the 
Pope forbade the attack upon Constantinople also in vain, 
and vainly pressed upon the Crusaders, by every argument, 
the necessity of proceeding to the Holy Land without delay. 
Innocent, it is true, did not refuse his share of the splendid 
stuffs and ornaments which fell into their hands, for ecclesi- 
astical uses : and he was silenced by the fictitious submission 
of the Greek Church, and the supposed healing of the schism 
which had rent the East and the West from each other. 
Nevertheless he looked on upon the progress of affairs in 
Constantinople with unquiet eyes. But what could the Pope 
do in his distant seat, armed with those spiritual powers 
alone which even at home these fierce warriors held so 
lightly, against the rage of acquisition, the excitement of con- 
quest, even the sweep and current of affairs, which carried 
the chiefs of the armies in the East so much further and in 
so changed a direction from that which even they themselves 
desired ? He entreated, he commanded, he threatened : but 
when all was said he was but the Pope, far off and power- 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 355 

less, who could excommunicate indeed, but do no more. The 
only thing possible for Innocent was to look on, sometimes 
with a gleam of high hope as when the Greek Church came 
over to him, as appeared, to be received again into full 
communion with the rest of Christendom : sometimes with 
a half unwilling pleasure as when Baldwin's presents arrived, 
cloth of gold and wonderful embroideries to decorate the 
great arches of St. Peter's and the Lateran : and again with 
a more substantial confidence when Constantinople itself 
had become a Latin empire under the same Baldwin — that 
it might henceforward become a basis of operations in the 
holy war against the Saracens and promote the objects of 
the Crusade more effectually than could be done from a 
distance. Amid all his disappointments and the impatient 
sense of futility and helplessness which must have many a 
time invaded his soul, it is comfortable to know that Inno- 
cent died in this last belief, and never found out how equally 
futile it was. 

There was, however, one other great undertaking of his 
time in which it would seem that the Pontiff was more 
directly influential, even though, for any reader who re- 
spects the character and ideal of Innocent, it is sickening 
to the heart to realise what it was. It was that other 
Crusade, so miserable and so bloody, against the Albi- 
genses, which was the only successful enterprise which 
with any show of justice could be set down to the account 
of the Church. Nobody seems even now to know very 
well what the heresies were, against which, in the failure 
of other schemes, the arms of the defenders of religion 
were directed. They were, as Dissent generally is, mani- 
fold, while the Church regarded them as one. Among them 
were humble little sects who desired only to lead a purer 
and truer life than the rude religionists among whom they 
dwelt; while there were also others who held in various 
strange formulas all kinds of wild doctrine: but between 



356 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

the Poor Men of Lyons, the Scripture-Readers whose aim was 
to serve God in humility, apart from all pomps of religion, 
and splendour of hierarchies — and the strange Manichean 
sects with their elaborate and confused philosophical doc- 
trine — the thirteenth century knew no difference. It ranked 
them all under the same name of heretic, and attributed to 
all of them the errors of the worst and smallest section. 
Even so late as the eighteenth century, Muratori, a scholar 
without prejudice, makes one sweeping assertion that they 
were Manicheans, without a doubt or question. It is need- 
less to say that whatever they were, fire and sword was not 
the way to mend them of their errors; for that also was an 
idea wholly beyond the understanding of the time. 

When Innocent came first to the Papacy his keen per- 
ception of the many vices of the Church was increased by 
a conviction that error of doctrine accompanied in certain 
portions of Christendom the general corruption of life. In 
some of his letters he comments severely, always with a 
reference to the special evils against which he struggled, 
on the causes and widening propagation of heresy. "If 
the shepherd is a hireling," he says, " and thinks not of the 
flock, but solely of himself : if he cares only for the wool 
* and the milk, without defending them from the wolves that 
attack them, or making himself a wall of defence against 
their enemies : and if he takes flight at the first sound of 
danger : the ruin and loss must be laid to his charge. The 
keeper of the sheep must not be like a dumb dog that 
cannot bark. When the priesthood show that they do not 
know how to separate holy things from common, they 
resemble those vile wine-sellers who mingle water with 
their wine. The name of God is blasphemed because of 
those who love money, who seek presents, who justify the 
wicked by allowing themselves to be corrupted by them. 
The vigilance of the ministers of religion can do much to 
arrest the progress of evil. The league of heretics should 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 357 

be dissolved by faithful instruction: for the Lord desires 
not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should be con- 
verted and live." 

It may be curious also to quote here the cautious utter- 
ance of Innocent upon the pretension of the more pious 
sectarians to found everything on Scripture and to make 
the study of the Bible their chief distinction. The same 
arguments are still used in the Catholic Church, sometimes 
even in the same terms. 

"The desire to know the Holy Scriptures and to profit by their 
teaching is praiseworthy, but this desire must not be satisfied in secret, 
nor should it degenerate into the wish to preach, or to despise the min- 
isters of religion. It is not the will of God that His word should be 
proclaimed in secret places as is done by these heretics, but publicly 
in the Church. The mysteries of the faith cannot be explained by 
every comer, for not every intellect is capable of understanding them. 
The Holy Scriptures are so profound that not only the simple and 
ignorant but even intelligent and learned men are unqualified to inter- 
pret them." 

At no time however, though he spoke so mildly and so 
candidly, acknowledging that the best way to overcome the 
heretics was to convert and to convince them, did Innocent 
conceal his intention and desire to carry proceedings against 
them to the sternest of conclusions. If it were possible 
by any exertions to bring them back to the bosom of the 
Church, he charged all ecclesiastical authorities, all preach- 
ers, priests, and monastic establishments to do everything 
that was possible to accomplish this great work ; but failing 
that, he called upon all princes, lords, and civil rulers to 
take stringent measures and cut them off from the land — 
recommendations that ended in the tremendous and appall- 
ing expedient of a new Crusade, a Crusade with no double 
motive, no object of restoration and deliverance combined 
with that of destruction, but bound to the sole agency of 
sheer massacre, bloodshed, and ruin, an internecine warfare 
of the most horrible kind. 

It must be added, however, that the preachers who at 



358 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

Innocent's command set out, more or less in state, high offi- 
cials, ecclesiastics of name and rank, to convince the heretics, 
by their preaching and teaching, took the first part in the 
conflict. According to his lights he spared no pains to give 
the doomed sects the opportunity of conversion, though with 
very little success. Among his envoys were two Spaniards, 
one a bishop, one that great Dominic, the founder of the 
Dominican order, who filled so great a part in the history 
of his time. Amid the ineffectual legates these two were 
missionaries born : they represented to the other preachers 
that demonstrations against heresy in the cathedrals was no 
way of reaching the people, but that the true evangelists 
must go forth into the country, humble and poor as were 
the adversaries whom they had to overcome. They them- 
selves set out on their mission barefoot, without scrip or 
purse, after the manner of the Apostles. Strange to think 
that it was in Provence, the country of the Troubadours, 
the land of song, where poetry and love were supreme ac- 
cording to all and every tradition of history, that the grim- 
mest heresy abounded, and that this stern pair carried on 
their mission ! but so it was. Toulouse, where Courts of 
Love sate yearly, and the trouveres held their tournaments 
of song, was the centre of the tragedy. But not even those 
devoted preachers, nor the crowd of eager priests and monks 
who followed in their steps, succeeded in their mission. 
The priesthood and the religion it taught had fallen very 
low in Provence, and no one heeded the new missionaries, 
neither the heretics nor the heedless population around. 

IN o doubt the Pope, the man of so many disappointments, 
had set his heart on this as a thing in which for once he 
must not fail, and watched with a sore and angry heart the 
unsuccess of all these legitimate efforts. But it was not 
until one of the legates, a man most trusted and honoured, 
Pierre de Castelnati, was treacherously killed in the midst 
of his mission, that Innocent was fully roused. Heretofore 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 359 

he had rained excommunications over all the world, and his 
curses had come back to him without avail. But on this 
occasion at least he had a sure weapon in hand. The Pope 
proclaimed a Crusade against the heretics. He proclaimed 
throughout Europe that whoever undertook this holy enter- 
prise it should be counted to him as if he had fought for 
Jerusalem : all the indulgences, blessings, hopes for heaven 
and exemptions for earth, which had been promised to those 
who were to deliver the Holy Sepulchre, were equally be- 
stowed on those who went no further than the south of 
France, one of the richest districts in Christendom, where 
fair lands and noble castles were to be had for the conquest 
without risking a stormy voyage or a dangerous climate. The 
goods of unrepentant heretics were confiscated, and every 
one was free to help himself as if they had been Turks and 
infidels. In none of his undertakings was the Pope so hotly 
in earnest. There is something of the shrillness of a man 
who has found himself impotent in many undertakings in 
the passion which Innocent throws into this. " Rise, soldier 
of Christ ! " he cries to the king of Prance ; " up, most 
Christian prince ! The groans of the Church rise to your 
ears, the blood of the just cries out : up, then, and judge 
my cause : gird on your sword ; think of the unity of the 
cross and the altar, that unity taught us by Moses, by Peter, 
by all the fathers. Let not the bark of the Church make 
shipwreck. Up, for her help ! Strike strongly against the 
heretics, who are more dangerous than the Saracens ! " 

The appeal came to a host of eager ears. Many good 
and true men were no doubt among the army which gath- 
ered upon the gentle hill of Hyeres in the blazing midsum- 
mer of the year 1209, cross on breast and sword in hand, 
sworn to exterminate heresy, and bring back the country to 
the sway of the true religion; but an overwhelming num- 
ber besides, who were hungry for booty however obtained, 
and eager to win advancement for themselves, filled up the 



360 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

ranks. Such motives were not absent even from the bosom 
of Simon de Montfort, their general, otherwise a good man 
and true. The sovereignty of Toulouse glimmered before 
him over seas of blood, which was as the blood of the Sara- 
cen, no better, though it flowed in the veins of Frenchmen; 
but the Provencaux could scarcely be called Frenchmen in 
those early days. They were no more beloved of their 
northern neighbours than the English were by the Scots, 
and the expedition against them was as much justified by 
distinctions of race as was the conflict of Bannockburn. 

The chapter of history that followed we would fain on all 
sides obliterate, if we could, from the records of humanity, 
and we doubt not that the strictest Catholic as much as 
the most indignant Protestant would share this wish; but 
that, alas, cannot be done. And no such feeling was in any 
mind of the time. The remedy was not thought to be too 
terrible for the disease, for centuries after: and the most 
Christian souls rejoiced in the victories of the Crusade, 
the towns destroyed, the nests of heretics broken up. The 
very heretics themselves, who suffered fiercely and made 
reprisals when they could, had no doctrine of toleration 
among themselves, and would have extirpated a wicked 
hierarchy, and put down the mass with a high hand, as 
four hundred years later their more enlightened successors 
did, when the power came to them. There are many 
shuddering spectators who now try to represent to them- 
selves that Innocent so far off was but half, or not at all, 
acquainted with the atrocities committed in his name ; that 
his legates over-stepped their authority, as frequently hap- 
pened, and were carried away by the excitement of car- 
nage and the terrible impulse of destruction common to 
wild beasts and men when that fatal passion is aroused; 
and that his generals soon converted their Crusade, as 
Crusades more or less were converted everywhere, into a 
raid of fierce acquisition, a war for booty and personal en- 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 361 

richment. And all this is true for as much as it is worth 
in reducing the guilt of Innocent ; but that is not much, for 
he was a man very well acquainted with human nature, and 
knew that such things must be. 

As for Simon de Montfort and his noble companions, 
they were not, much less were the men-at-arms under their 
orders, superior to all that noble chivalry of France which 
had started from Venice with so fine a purpose, but had been 
drawn aside to crush and rob Constantinople on their way, 
only some seven years before. Baldwin of Flanders became 
Emperor of the great eastern city in 1204. Simon de Mont- 
fort named himself Count de Toulouse in 1215. Both had 
been sent forth with the Pope's blessing on quite a differ- 
ent mission, both had succumbed to the temptation of their 
own aggrandisement. But of the two, at the end Simon 
was the more faithful. If he committed or permitted to be 
committed the most abominable cruelties, he nevertheless 
did stamp out heresy. Provence regained her gaiety, her 
courts of love, her gift of song. Innocent, for once in his 
life, with all the dreadful drawbacks accompanying it, was 
successful in the object for which he had striven. 

It is a dreadful thing to have to say of the most powerful 
of Popes, in whose time the Papacy, we are told, reached 
its highest climax of power in the affairs of men : he was 
successful once : in devastating a country and slaughtering 
by thousands its inhabitants in the name of God and the 
Church. All his attempts to set right the affairs of the 
world failed. He neither nominated an emperor, nor saved 
a servile king from ruin, nor struck a generous blow for 
that object of the enthusiasm of his age, the deliverance of 
Jerusalem. All of these he attempted with the utmost 
strain and effort of his powers, and many more, but failed. 
Impossible to say that it was not truth and justice which 
he set before him at all times ; he was an honest man and 
loved not bloodshed; he had a great intelligence, and there 



362 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

is no proof that his heart was cold or his sympathies dull. 
But his career, which is so often quoted as an example of 
the supremacy of the Papacy, seems to us the greatest and 
most perfect demonstration that such a supremacy was im- 
possible. Could it have been done, Innocent would have 
done it; but it could not be done, and in the plenitude of 
his power he failed over and over again. What credit he 
might have had in promoting Otho to the empire fades away 
when we find that it was the accident of Philip's death and 
not the support of the Pope that did it. In England his 
assumed suzerainty was a farce, and all his efforts ineffect- 
ual to move one way or the other the destinies of the na- 
tion. At Constantinople his prayers and commands and 
entreaties had about as much power as the outcries of a 
woman upon his own special envoys and soldiers. In 
Prance he had one brief triumph indeed, and broke a 
poor woman's heart, a thing which is accomplished every 
day by much easier methods; though his action then was 
the only moral triumph of his reign, being at least in the 
cause of the weak against the strong. And he filled Prov- 
ence with blood and misery, and if he crushed heresy, 
crushed along with it that noble and beautiful country, 
and its royal house, and its liberties. Did he ever feel 
the contrast between his attempts and his successes ? Was 
he sore at heart with the long and terrible failure of his 
efforts ? or was he comforted by such small consolations as 
fell to him, the final vindication of Ingelburga, the ficti- 
tious submission of the Greek Church, the murderous ex- 
tinction of heresy ? Was it worth while for a great man 
to have endured and struggled, to have lived sleepless, rest- 
less, ever vigilant, watching every corner of the earth, keep- 
ing up a thousand espionages and secret intelligences all for 
this, and nothing more ? 

He was the greatest of the Popes and attained the climax 
of papal power. He carried out the principles which Hilde- 



iv.] INNOCENT m. 363 

brand had established, and asserted to their fullest all the 
claims which that great Pontiff, also a deeply disappointed 
man, had made. Gregory and Innocent are the two most 
prominent names in the lists of the Papacy ; they are the 
greatest generals of that army which, in its way, is an army 
invincible, against which the gates of hell cannot prevail. 
Let us hope that the merciful illusions which keep human 
nature going prevented them from seeing how little all their 
great claims had come to. Gregory indeed, dying sad and 
in exile, felt it more or less, but was able to set it down to 
the wickedness of the world in which truth and justice did 
not reign. And there is a profound sadness in the last dis- 
course of Innocent ; but perhaps they were neither of them 
aware what a deep stamp of failure remains, visible for all 
the world to see, upon those great undertakings of theirs 
which were not for the Church but for the world. God had 
not made them judges and dividers among men, though 
they believed so to the bottom of their hearts. 

It is perhaps overbold in a writer without authority to set 
forth an individual opinion in the face of much more power- 
fid judgments. But this book pretends to nothing except, 
so far as it is possible to form it, a glance of individual 
opinion and impression in respect to matters which are 
otherwise too great for any but the most learned and 
weighty historian. The statement of Dean Milman that 
" He (Innocent) succeeded in imposing an Emperor on Ger- 
many " appears to us quite inconsistent with the facts of the 
case. But we would not for a moment pretend that Milman 
does not know a hundred times better than the present 
writer, whose ra}3id glance at the exterior aspects of history 
will naturally go for what it is worth and no more. The 
aspect of a pageant however to one who watches it go by 
from a window, is sometimes an entertaining variety upon 
its fullest authoritative description. 

It will be understood that we have no idea of represent- 



364 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

ing the reign of these great Popes as without power in many 
other matters. They strengthened greatly the authority and 
control exercised by the Holy See over its special and legit- 
imate empire, the Church. They drew to the court of Rome 
so many appeals and references of disputed cases in law and 
in morals as to shed an increased influence over the world 
like an unseen irrigation swelling through all the roots and 
veins of Christendom. They even gave so much additional 
prestige and importance to Church dignitaries as to increase 
the power which the great Prelates often exercised against 
themselves. But the highest pretensions of the Successors 
of Peter, the Vicars of God, to be judges and arbiters of the 
world, setters up and pullers down of thrones, came to no 
fulfilment. The Popes were flattered by appeals, by mock 
submissions on the weaker side, even by petitions for the 
ever ready interference which they seem to have attempted 
in good faith, always believing in their own authority. 
But in the end their decision's and decrees in Imperial ques- 
tions were swept away like chaff before the strong wind 
of secular power and policy, and history cannot point to 
one important revolution l in the affairs of the world or any 
separate kingdom made by their unaided power. 

The last great act of Innocent's life was the council held 
in the year 1215 in Rome, known as the fourth Lateran 
Council. It was perhaps the greatest council that had ever 
been held there, not only because of the large number of 
ecclesiastics present, but because for the first time East and 
West sat together, the Patriarch of Constantinople (or 
rather two patriarchs, for the election was contested) taking 
their place in it, in subordination to the Pope, as if the 

1 The Vice-Provost of Eton who has kindly read these pages in the 
gentle criticism which can say no harsh word, here remarks : "If suc- 
cess is measured less by immediate results than by guiding the way in 
which men think, I should say that Innocent was successful. ' What 
will the Pope say ? ' was the question asked in every corner of the 
world — though he was not always obeyed." 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 365 

great schism had never been. From all the corners of the 
earth came the bishops and archbishops, the not less impor- 
tant abbots, prelates who were nobles as well as priests, 
counting among them the greatest lords in their respective 
districts as well as the greatest ecclesiastics. Innocent him- 
self was a man of fifty -five, of most temperate life, vigorous 
in mind and body, likely to survive for years, and to do 
better than he had ever yet done — and he was so far tri- 
umphant for the moment that all the kings of Christendom 
had envoys at this council, and everything united to make 
it magnificent and important. Why he should have taken 
for his text the ominous words he chose when addressing 
that great and splendid assembly in his own special church 
and temple, surrounded with all the emblems of power and 
supremacy, it is impossible to tell ; and one can imagine the 
thrill of strange awe and astonishment which must have 
run through that vast synod, when the Pope rose, and 
from his regal chair pronounced these words, first uttered 
in the depths of the mysterious passion and anguish of the 
greatest sufferer on earth. " With desire I have desired to 
eat this passover with you before I suffer." What was it 
that Innocent anticipated or feared ? There was no suffering 
before him that any one knew, no trouble that could reach 
the chief of Christendom, heavy-hearted and depressed, 
amid all his guards, spiritual and temporal, as he may 
have been. What could they think, all those great prelates 
looking, no doubt, often askance at each other, brethren 
in the church, but enemies at home ? Nor were the first 
words of his discourse less solemn. 

" As to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain, I should not refuse to 
drink the cup of suffering, were it presented to me, for the defence of the 
Catholic Church, for the deliverance of the Holy Land, or for the free- 
dom of the Church, even although my desire had been to live in the 
flesh until the work that has been begun should be accomplished. Not- 
withstanding not my will, but the will of God be done ! This is why 
I say, ' With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before 
I suffer.' " 



366 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

These words sound in our ears as if the preacher who 
uttered them was on the verge, if not of martyrdom, at least 
of death and the premature end of his work. And so he 
was : although there was as yet no sign in heaven or earth, 
or so far as appears in his own consciousness, that this end 
was near. 

The discourse which followed was remarkable in its way, 
the way of the schoolmen and dialecticians so far as its form 
went. He began by explaining the word Passover, which in 
Hebrew he said meant passage — in which sense of the word 
he declared himself to desire to celebrate a triple Passover, 
corporal, spiritual, and eternal, with the Church around him. 

"A corporal Passover, the passage from one place to 
another to deliver Jerusalem oppressed : a spiritual Pass- 
over, a passage from one situation to another for the sanc- 
tification of the universal Church ; an eternal Passover, a 
passage from one life to another, to eternal glory." For 
the first, the deliverance of the Holy Land and the Holy 
Sepulchre, after a solemn description of the miseries of 
Jerusalem enslaved, he declares that he places himself in 
the hands of the brethren. 

" There can be no doubt that it ought to be the first object of the 
Church. What ought we now to do, dear brethren? I place myself 
in your hands. I open my heart entirely to you, I desire your advice. 
I am ready, if it seems good to you, to go forth on a personal mission 
to all the kings, princes, and peoples, or even to the Holy Land — and 
if I can to awaken them all with a strong voice that they may arise to 
fight the battle of the Lord, to avenge the insult done to Jesus Christ, 
who has been expelled by reason of our sins from the country and 
dwelling which He bought with His blood, and in which He accom- 
plished all things necessary for our salvation. We, the priests of the 
Lord, ought to attach a special importance to the redemption of the 
Holy Land by our blood and our wealth ; no one should draw back 
from such a great work. In former times the Lord seeing a similar 
humiliation of Israel saved it by means of the priests ; for he delivered 
Jerusalem and the Temple from the infidels by Matthias the son of the 
priest Maccabseus." 

He goes on to describe the spiritual passage by the singu- 
lar emblem to be found in the prophecies of Ezekiel, of the 




'*-. 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 369 

man clothed in white linen who inscribed a Tau upon the 
foreheads of all those who mourned over the iniquities com- 
mitted around them, the profanations of the temple and the 
universal idol worship — while the executors of God's will 
went after him, to slay the rest. There could be no doubt 
of the application of this image. It had already been seen 
in full fulfilment in the streets of Beziers, Carcassone, and 
Toulouse, and many of those present had taken part in the 
carnage. It is true that the rumour went that the men 
marked with a mark had not even been looked for, and one 
of the wonderful sayings which seem to spring up some- 
how in the air, at great moments, had been fathered upon a 
legate — Tuez les tons. Dieu reconnaitra les siens — a phrase 
which, like the " Up, Guards, and at them ! " of Waterloo, 
is said to have no historical foundation whatever. Innocent 
was, however, clear not only that every good Catholic should 
be marked with the Tau — but that the armed men whom he 
identifies with the priests, his own great army, seated there 
round him, men who had already seen the blood flow and 
the flames arise, should strike and spare not. 

' ' You are commanded then to go through the city ; obey him who 
is your supreme Pontiff, as your guide and your master — and strike 
by interdict, by suspension, by excommunication, by deprivation, ac- 
cording to the weight of the fault. But do no harm to those who bear 
the mark, for the Lord says : ' Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, 
neither the trees till we have sealed on their foreheads the servants of 
God.' It is said in other places, ' Let your eye spare no man, and let 
there be no acceptance of persons among you,' and in another passage, 
' Strike in order to heal, kill in order to give life.' " 

These were the Pope's sentiments, and they were those of 
his age; how many centuries it took to modify them we 
are all aware ; four hundred years at least, to moderate 
the practical ardour of persecution — for the theory never 
dies. But there is at the same time something savage in 
the fervour of such an address to all these men of peace. 
It is perhaps a slight modification that like Ezekiel it is 



370 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

the priests themselves, the dwellers in the Temple, who fill 
it with false gods and abominations, that he specially 
threatens. There were, however, so far as appears, few 
priests among the slaughtered townsfolk of those unhappy 
cities of Provence. 

The Council responded to the uncompromising directions 
of their head by placing among the laws of the Church 
many stringent ordinances against heretics; their goods 
were to be confiscated, they were to be turned out of their 
houses and possessions ; every prince who refused to act 
against them was to be excommunicated, his people freed 
from their vow of allegiance. If any one ventured to 
preach without the permission of the Pope he also was sub- 
ject to excommunication. A great many laws for the better 
regulation of the Church itself followed, for Innocent had 
always acknowledged the fact that the worldliness of the 
Church, and the failure of the clergy to maintain a high 
ideal of Christian life, was the great cause of heresy. The 
Council was also very distinct in refusing temporal author- 
ity to the priests. The clergy had their sphere and laymen 
theirs; those spheres were separate, they were inviolable 
each by the other. It is true that this principle was estab- 
lished chiefly with the intention of freeing the clergy from 
the necessity of answering before civil tribunals ; but logi- 
cally it cuts both ways. The Jews, to whom Innocent had 
been just and even merciful, were also dealt with and placed 
under new and stringent disabilities, chiefly on account, it 
seems, of the extortions they practised on needy Crusaders, 
eager at any price to procure advances for their equipment;. 
Various doctrinal points were also decided, as well as many 
questions of rank and precedence in the hierarchy, and the 
establishment of the two new monastic orders of St. Francis 
and of St. Dominic. It is needless to add a list of who was 
excommunicated and who censured throughout the world. 
Among the former were the barons of Magna Charta and 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 371 

Louis of France, the son of Philip Augustus, who had gone 
to England on their call and to their relief, a movement set 
on foot by Innocent himself before the submission of King- 
John. As usual, neither of them took any notice of the 
anathema, though other combinations shortly arose which 
broke their alliance. 

The great event of the Council, however, was the appeal 
of the forfeited lords of Provence against the leaders of 
the late Crusade. Raymond of Toulouse, accompanied 
by the Counts of Foix and of Comminges, appeared before 
the Pontiff and the high court of the Church to make 
their plaint against Simon de Montfort, who had deprived 
all three of their lands and sovereignties. A great recrimi- 
nation arose between the two sides, both so strongly rep- 
resented. The dethroned princes accused their conquerors 
with all the vehemence of men wronged and robbed ; and 
such a bloodstained prelate as Bishop Pulk of Toulouse 
was put forth as the advocate on the other side. "You 
are the cause of the death of a multitude of Catholic sol- 
diers," cried the bishop, " six thousand of whom were killed 
at Montjoye alone." "Nay, rather," replied the Comte de 
Foix, "it is by your fault that Toulouse was sacked and 
10,000 of the inhabitants slain." Such pleas are strange 
in any court of justice ; they were altogether new in a 
Council of the Church. The princes themselves, who thus 
laid their wrongs before the Pope, were not proved to be 
heretics, or if they had ever wavered in the faith were 
now quite ready to obey ; and Innocent himself was forced 
to allow that : " Since the Counts and their companions 
have promised at all times to submit to the Church, they 
cannot without injustice be despoiled of their principali- 
ties." But the utterance, it may well be understood, was 
weak, and choked by the impossibility of denouncing Simon 
de Montfort, the leader of a Crusade set on foot by the 
Church, the Captain of the Christian army. It might be 



372 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

that lie had exceeded his commission, that the legates had 
misunderstood their instructions, and that all the leaders, 
both secular and spiritual, had been carried away by the 
horrible excitement and passion of bloodshed : but yet it 
was impossible to disown the Captain who had taken up 
this enterprise as a true son of the Church, although he had 
ended in the spirit (not unusual among sons of the Church) 
of an insatiable raider and conqueror. The love of gain 
had warped the noble aims even of the first Crusade : 
what wonder that it became a fiery thirst in the invaders of 
lands so rich and tempting as those of the fertile and sunny 
Provence. And the Pope could not pronounce against his 
own champion. He would fain have preserved Raymond 
of Toulouse and Simon de Montf ort too — but that was im- 
possible. And the Council decreed by a great majority that 
Raymond had been justly deprived of his lands, and that 
Simon, the new Count, was their rightful possessor. The 
defender of Innocent can only say that the Pope yielded to 
and sanctioned this judgment in order that the bishops of 
France might not be alienated and rendered indifferent to 
the great Crusade upon which his heart was set, which he 
would fain have led himself had Providence permitted it so 
to be. 

There is a most curious postscript to this bloody 'and 
terrible history. Young Raymond of Toulouse, whose fate 
seemed a sad one even to the members of the Council who 
finally confirmed his deprivation, attracted the special re- 
gard — it is not said how, probably by some youthful grace 
of simplicity or gallant mien — of Innocent, who bade him 
take heart, and promised to give him certain lands that 
he might still live as a prince. " If another council 
should be held," said the Pope with a curious casuistry, 
" the pleas against Montfort may be listened to." " Holy 
Father," said the youth, " bear me no malice if I can win back 
again my principalities from the Count de Montfort, or from 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 373 

those others who hold them." " Whatever thou dost," said 
the Pope piously, " may God give thee grace to begin it well, 
and to finish it still better." Innocent is scarcely a man 
to tolerate a smile. We dare not even imagine a touch of 
humour in that austere countenance ; but the pious hope 
that this fair youth might perhaps overcome his conqueror, 
who was the very champion and captain of the army of the 
Lord as directed by the Pope, is remarkable indeed. 

The great event of the Council was over, the rumour of 
the new Crusade which the Pope desired to head himself, 
and for which in the meantime he was moving heaven 
and earth, began to stir Europe. If, perhaps, he had 
accomplished little hitherto of all that he had hoped, here 
remained a great thing which Innocent might still accom- 
plish. He set out on a tour through the great Italian 
towns to rouse their enthusiasm, and, if possible, induce 
them, in the first place, to sacrifice their mutual animosi- 
ties, and then to supply the necessary ships, and help with 
the necessary money for the great undertaking. The first 
check was received from Pisa, which would do whatever 
the Pope wished except forego its hatred against Genoa or 
give up its revenge. Innocent was in Perugia, on his way 
towards the north, when this news arrived to vex him : but 
it was not unexpected, nor was there anything in it to over- 
whelm his spirit. It was July, and he was safer and better 
on that hillside than he would have been in his house at 
the Lateran in the heats of summer: and an attack of 
fever at that season is a simple matter, which the ordinary 
Soman anticipates without any particular alarm. He had, 
we are told, a great love for oranges, and continued to eat 
them, notwithstanding his illness, though it is difficult to 
imagine what harm the oranges could do. However, the 
hour was come which Innocent had perhaps dimly foreseen 
when he rose up among all his bishops and princes in the 
great Lateran church, and, knowing nothing, gave forth 



374 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

from his high presiding chair the dying words of onr Lord, 
" With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you 
before I suffer." One wonders if his text came back to 
him, if he asked himself in his heart why his lips should 
have uttered those fateful words unawares, and if the bit- 
terness of that withdrawal, while still full of force and life, 
from all the hopes and projects to which he had set his 
hand, was heavy upon him ? He had proclaimed them in 
the hush and breathless silence of that splendid crowd in 
the ruddy days of the late autumn, St. Martin's festival at 
Eome : and the year had not gone its round when, in the 
summer weather at Perugia, he "suffered" — as he had — 
yet had not, perhaps foreseen. 

Thus ended a life of great effort and power, a life of dis- 
appointment and failure, full of toil, full of ambition, the 
highest aims, and the most consistent purpose — but end- 
ing in nothing, fulfilling no lofty aim, and, except in the 
horrible episode of bloodshed and destruction from which 
his name can never be dissociated, accomplishing no change 
in the world which he had attempted, in every quarter, 
to transform or to renew. Never was so much attempted 
with so little result. He claimed the power to bind and 
loose, to set up and to pull down, to decide every disputed 
cause and settle every controversy. But he succeeded in 
doing only one good deed, which was to force the king of 
France to retain an unloved wife, and one ill one, to print 
the name of Holy Church in blood across a ruined province, 
to the profit of many bloody partisans, but never to his 
own, nor to any cause which could be considered that of 
justice or truth. This, people say, was the age of history 
in which the power of the Church was highest, and Inno- 
cent was its strongest ruler ; but this was all which, with 
his great powers, his unyielding character and all the 
forces at his command, he was able to achieve. He was in 
his way a great man, and his purpose was never ignoble ; 



iv.] INNOCENT III. 375 

but this was all : and history does not contain a sadder page 
than that which records one of the greatest of all the pon- 
tificates, and the strongest Pope that history has known. 

During the whole of Innocent's Popedom he had been more 
or less at war with his citizens notwithstanding his success 
at first. Rome murmured round him never content, occa- 
sionally bursting out into fits of rage, which, if not absolute 
revolt, were so near it as to suggest the withdrawal of the 
Pope to his native place Anagni, or some other quiet resi- 
dence, till the tumult calmed down. The greatest of these 
commotions occurred on the acquisition of certain properties 
in Rome, by the unpopular way of foreclosure on mortgages, 
by the Porje's brother Richard, against whom no doubt some 
story of usury or oppression was brought forth, either real 
or invented, to awaken the popular emotion: and in this 
case Innocent's withdrawal had very much the character of 
an escape. The Papa-Re was certainly not a popular insti- 
tution in the thirteenth century. This same brother Rich- 
ard had many gifts bestowed upon him to the great anger 
and suspicion of the people, and it was he who built, with 
money given him, it is said, from " the treasury of the 
Church," the great Torre dei Conti, which for many genera- 
tions stood strong and sullen near the Baths of Titus, and 
within easy reach of the Lateran, " for the defence of the 
family," a defence for which it was not always adequate. 
Innocent afterwards granted a valuable fief in the Romagna 
to his brother, and he was generally far from unmindful of 
his kindred. All that his warmest defenders can say for 
him indeed in this respect is that he made up for his devo= 
tion to the interests of the Conti by great liberality towards 
Rome. On one occasion of distress and famine he fed eight 
thousand people daily, and at all times the poor had a right 
to the remnants left from his own table — which however 
was not perhaps any great thing as his living was of the 
simplest. 



376 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

What was still more important, he built, or perhaps 
rather rebuilt and enlarged, the great hospital, still one of 
the greatest charitable institutions of the world, of the 
Santo Spirito, which had been first founded several centu- 
ries before by the English king Ina for the pilgrims of his 
country. The Ecclesia in Saxia, probably forsaken in these 
days when England had become Norman, formed the germ 
of the great building, afterwards enlarged by various suc- 
ceeding Popes. It is said now to have 1,600 beds, and to be 
capable, on an emergency, of accommodating almost double 
that number of patients, and is, or was, a sort of providence 
for the poor population of Rome. It was Innocent also who 
began the construction, or rather reconstruction, for in that 
case too there was an ancient building, of the Vatican, now 
the -seat and title of the papal court — thinking it expedient 
that there should be a house capable of receiving the Popes 
near the church of St. Peter and St. Paul the tomb and 
shrine of the Apostles. It is not supposed that the present 
building retains any of the work of that early time, but Inno- 
cent must have superintended both these great edifices, and 
in this way, as also by many churches which he built or re- 
built, and some which he decorated with paintings and archi- 
tectural ornament, he had his part in the reconstruction and 
embellishment of that mediaeval Pome which after long 
decay and much neglect, and the wholesale robbery of the 
very stones of the older city, was already beginning to lift 
up its head out of the ashes of antiquity. 

Thus if he took with one hand — not dishonestly, in the 
interest of his family, appropriating fiefs and favours which 
probably could not have been better bestowed, for the safety 
at least of the reigning Pope — he gave liberally and intel- 
ligently with the other, consulting the needs of the people, 
and studying their best interests. Yet he would not seem 
ever to have been popular. His spirit probably lacked the 
bonhomie which conciliates the crowd : though we are told 



IV.] 



INNOCENT III. 



377 



that he loved public celebrations, and did not frown upon 
private gaiety. His heart, it is evident,, was touched for 



.# 








ALL THAT IS LEFT OF THE GHETTO. 

young Eaymond of Toulouse, whom he was instrumental 
in despoiling of his lands, but whom he blessed in his effort 
to despoil in his turn the orthodox and righteous spoiler. 



378 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [ch. iv. 

He was neither unkind, nor niggardly, nor luxurious. " The 
glory of his actions filled the great city and the whole 
world," said his epitaph. At least he had the credit of 
being the greatest of all the Popes, and the one under whom, 
as is universally allowed, the papal power attained its climax. 
The reader must judge how far this climax of power justi- 
fied what has been said. 



BOOK III. 

LO POPOLO: AND THE TRIBUNE OF 
THE PEOPLE. 






-^<&£rA If ' Kfd 




ON THE TIBER. 

BOOK III. 

LO POPOLO: AND THE TRIBUNE OF 
THE PEOPLE. 

CHAPTEE I. 



ROME IN" THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 

WHEN the Papal Seat was transferred to Avignon, and 
Rome was left to its own devices and that fluctuating 
popular government which meant little beyond a wavering 
balance of power between two great families, the state of the 
ancient imperial city became more disorderly, tumultuous 
and anarchical than that of almost any other town in Italy, 
which is saying much. All the others had at least the tra- 
ditions of an established government, or a sturdy tyranny : 

Rome alone had never been at peace and scarcely knew how 

381 



382 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

to compose herself under any sway. She had fought her 
Popes, sometimes desperately, sometimes only captiously 
with the half-subdued rebelliousness of ill-temper, almost 
from the beginning of their power ; and her sons had long 
been divided into a multiplicity of parties, each holding by 
one of the nobles who built their fortresses among the classic 
ruins, and defied the world from within the indestructible 
remnants of walls built by the Caesars. One great family 
after another entrenched itself within those monuments of 
the ancient ages. The Colosseum was at one time the 
stronghold of the great Colonna: Stefano, the head of that 
name, inhabited the great building known as the Theatre 
of Marcellus at another period, and filled with his retainers 
an entire quarter. The castle of St. Angelo, with various 
flanking towers, was the home of the Orsini ; and these two 
houses more or less divided the power between them, the 
other nobles adhering to one or the other party. Even amid 
the tumults of Florence there was always a shadow of a 
principle, a supposed or real cause in the name of which one 
party drove another fuori, out of the city. But in Home 
even the great quarrel of Guelf and Ghibelline took an 
almost entirely personal character to increase the perpetual 
tumult. The vassals of the Pope were not on the Pope's 
side nor were they against him, 

non furon rebelli 
Ne fur fedeli a Dio, ma per s6 foro. 

The community was distracted by mere personal quarrels, 
by the feuds of the great houses who were their lords but 
only tore asunder, and neither protected nor promoted the 
prosperity of that greatest of Italian cities, which in its 
miserable incompetence and tumult was for a long time the 
least among them. 

The anonymous historian who has left to us the story of 
Cola di Rienzi affords us the most lively picture of the city 



i.] ROME IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 383 

in which, in his terse and vivid record, there is the per- 
petual sound of a rushing, half-armed crowd, of blows that 
seem to fall at random, and trumpets that sound, .and bells 
that ring, calling out the People — a word so much mis- 
used — upon a hundred trifling occasions, with little blood- 
shed one would imagine but a continual rushing to and 
fro and disturbance of all the ordinary habits of life. We 
need not enter into any discussion of who this anonymous 
writer was. He is the only contemporary historian of 
Rienzi, and his narrative has every appearance of truth. 
He narrates the things he saw with a straightforwardness 
and simplicity which are very convincing. " I will begin," 
he says, " with the time when these two barons (the heads 
of the houses of Colonna and Orsini) were made knights by 
the people of Rome. Yet," he adds, with an afterthought, 
" I will not begin with an account of that, because I was 
then at too tender an age to have had clear knowledge of 
it." Thus our historian is nothing if not an eye-witness, 
very keenly aware of every incident, and viewing the events, 
and the streams of people as they pass, with the never-fail- 
ing interest of a true chronicler. We may quote the 
incident with which he does begin as an example of his 
method : his language is the Italian of Rome, a local version, 
yet scarcely to be called a patois: it presents little difficulty 
after the first moment to the moderately instructed reader, 
who however, I trust, will kindly understand that the eccen- 
tricities are the chronicler's and not errors of the press. 

" With what new thing shall I begin ? I will begin with the time of 
Jacopo di Saviello. Being made Senator solely by the authority of King 
Robert, he was driven out of the Capitol by the Syndics, who were 
Stefano de la Colonna, Lord of Palestrina, and Poncello, and Messer 
Orso, lord of the Castle of St. Angelo. These two went to the Aracceli, 
and ringing the bell collected the people, half cavalry and half on foot. 
All Eome was under arms. I recollect it well as in a dream. I 
was in Sta. Maria del Popolo (di lo Piubbico) . And I saw the line of 
horsemen passing, going towards the Capitol : strongly they went and 
proudly. Half of them were well mounted, half were on foot. The 
last of them (If I recollect rightly) wore a tunic of red silk, and a cap 



384 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

of yellow silk on his head, and carried a bunch of keys in his hand. 
They passed along the road by the well where dwell the Ferrari, at the 
corner of the house of Paolo Jovenale. The line was long. The bell 
was ringing and the people arming themselves. I was in Santa Maria 
di lo Piubbico. To these things I put my seal (as witness). Jacopo 
di Saviello, Senator, was in the Capitol. He was surrounded on all 
sides with fortifications : but it did him no good to entrench himself, 
for Stefano, his uncle, went up. and Poncello the Syndic of Eome, and 
took him gently by the hand and set him on his horse that there might 
be no risk to his person. There was one who thought and said, ' Stefano, 
how can you bring your nephew thus to shame ? ' The proud answer 
of Stefano was : 'For two pennyworth of wax I will set him free,' — 
but the two pence were not forthcoming." 

Jacopo di Saviello, thus described as a nominee of the 
King of Naples, is a person without much importance, 
touching whose individuality it would take too much space 
to inquire. He appears afterwards as the right hand man 
of his cousin, Sciarra Colonna, and the incident has no doubt 
some connection with the story that follows : but we quote 
it merely as an illustration of the condition of Rome at the 
beginning of the fourteenth century. In the month of Sep- 
tember in the year 1327 there occurred an episode in the 
history of the city which affords many notable scenes. The 
city of Home had in one of its many caprices taken the part 
of Louis of Bavaria, who had been elected Emperor to the 
great displeasure of John XXIL, the Pope then reigning in 
Avignon. According to the chronicler, though the fact is 
not mentioned in other histories, the Pope sent his legate to 
Eome, accompanied by the " Principe de la Morea " and a 
considerable army, in order to prevent the reception there 
of II Bavaro as he is called, who was then making his way 
through Italy with much success and triumph. By this 
time there would seem to have been a complete revolution 
in the opinions of Rome, and the day when two-pennyworth 
of wax could not be got for the ransom of Saviello was 
forgotten under the temporary rule of Sciarra Colonna, 
the only one of his family who was a Ghibelline, and who 
held strongly for Louis of Bavaria, rejecting all the tradi- 



i.] ROME IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 385 

tions of his house. Our chronicler, who is very impartial, 
and gives us no clue to his own opinions, by no means de- 
spised the party of the Pope. There arrived before Eome, 
he tells us, " seven hundred horsemen and foot soldiers with- 
out end. All the barons of the house of Orsini," and many 
other notable persons : and the whole army was molto bella e 
bene acconeia, well equipped and beautiful to behold. This 
force gained possession of the Leonine city, entering not by 
the gates which were guarded, but by the ruined wall : and 
occupied the space between that point and St. Peter's, mak- 
ing granne festa, and filling the air with the sound of their 
trumpets and all kinds of music. 

"But when Sciarra the bold captain (franco Capitano) heard of it, 
it troubled him not at all. Immediately he armed himself and caused 
the bell to be rung. It was midnight and men were in their first sleep. 
A messenger with a trumpet was sent through the town, proclaiming 
that every one should arm himself, that the enemy had entered the 
gates (in Puortica) and that all must assemble on the Capitol. The 
people who slept, quickly awakened, each took up his arms. Cossia 
was the name of the crier. The bell was ringing violently (terribil- 
mente). The people went to the Capitol, both the barons and the 
populace : and the good Capitano addressed them and said that the 
enemy had come to outrage the women of Eome. The people were 
much excited. They were then divided into parties, of one of which 
he was captain himself. Jacopo Saviello was at the head of the other 
which was sent to the gate of San Giovanni, then called Puorta Mag- 
giore. And this was done because they knew that the enemy was 
divided in two parties. But it did not happen so. When Jacopo 
reached the gate he found no one. On the other hand Sciarra rode 
with his barons. Great was the company of horsemen. Seven Bioni 
had risen to arms and innumerable were the people. They reached 
the gate of San Pietro. I remember that on that night a Boman knight 
who had ridden to the bridge heard a trumpet of the enemy, and desir- 
ing to fly jumped from his horse, and leaving it came on on foot. I know 
that there was no lack of fear (non habe carestia di paura). When 
the people reached the bridge it was already day, the dawn had come. 
Then Sciarra commanded that the gate should be opened. The crowd 
was great, and the enemy were much troubled to see on the bridge the 
number of pennons, for they knew that with each pennon there were 
twenty -five men. Then the gate was opened. The Bione of li Monti 
went first : the people filled the Piazza of the Castello : they were all 
ranged in order, both soldiers and people. 

"Now were seen the rushing of the horses, one on the top of another. 
One gave, another took (die dao, die tolle), great was the noise, great 
2c 



386 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

was the encounter. Trumpets sounded on this side and that. One 
gave, and another took. Sciarra and Messer Andrea di Campo di 
Piore confronted each other and abused each other loudly. Then they 
broke their lances upon each other : then struck with their swords : 
neither would have less than the life of the other. Presently they 
separated and came back each to his people. There was great striking 
of swords and lances and some fell. It could be seen that it was a 
cruel fight. The people of Rome wavered back and forward like waves 
of the sea. But it was the enemy that gave way, the people gained 
the middle of the Piazza. Then was done a strange thing. One whose 
name was Giovanni Manno, of the Colonna, carried the banner of the 
people of Rome. When he came to the great well, which is in that 
Piazza, in front of the Incarcerate, where was the broken wall, he took 
the banner and threw it into the well. And this he did to discourage 
the people of Rome. The traitor well deserved to lose his life. The 
Romans however did not lose courage, and already the Prince of the 
Morea began to give way. He had either to fly or to be killed. Then 
Sciarra de la Colonna, like a good mother with her son, comforted the 
people and made everything go well, such great sense did he show. 
Also another novel thing was done. A great man of Rome (Cola de 
Madonna Martorni de li Anniballi was his name) was a very bold per- 
son and young. He was seized with desire to take prisoner the Prince 
himself. He spurred his horse, and breaking through the band of 
strongmen who encircled the Prince put out his hand to take him. So 
he had hoped to do at least, but was not successful, for the Prince with 
an iron club wounded his horse. The strength of the Prince's charger 
was such that Cola was driven back : but the horse of Cola had not 
sufficient space to move, and its hind feet slipping, it fell into the ditch 
which is in front of the gate of the Hospital of Santo Spirito, to defend 
the garden. In the ditch both his horse and he, trying to escape, fell, 
pressed by the soldiers of the Prince : and there was he killed. Great 
was the mourning which Rome made over so distinguished a baron — 
and all the people were fired with indignation. 

"The Prince now retired, his troops yielded. They began to fly. 
The flight was great. Greater was the slaughter. They were killed 
like sheep. Much resistance was made, many people were killed, and 
the Romans gained much prey. Among those taken was Bertollo the 
chief of the Orsini, Captain of the army of the Church, and of the 
Guelf party : and if it had not been that Sciarra caught him up on 
the croup of his horse, he would have been murdered by the people." 

Then follows a horrible account of the number of dead 
who lay mutilated and naked on every roadside, and even 
among the vineyards : and the story ends with Sciarra's 
return to the Capitol with great triumph, and of a beautiful 
pallium which was sent to the Church of Sant' Angelo in 
Pescheria, along with a chalice, "in honour of this Roman 
victory." 




^ 

£ 



i.] ROME IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 389 

Curiously enough our chronicler takes no notice of the 
episode of which this attack and repulse evidently form 
part, the reception of II Bavaro in Borne, which is one of 
the unique incidents in Roman history. It took place in 
May of the following year, and afforded a very striking 
scene to the eager townsfolk, never quite sure that they 
could tolerate the Tedeschi, though pleased with them for 
a novelty and willing enough to fight their legitimate lord 
the Pope on behalf of the strangers. It was in January 
1328 that Louis of Bavaria made his entrance into Borne — 
Sciarra Colonna above named being still Senator, head of 
the Ghibelline party, and the friend of the new-made Em- 
peror. After being met at Viterbo by the Boman officials 
and questioned as to his intentions, Louis marched with his 
men into the Leonine city and established himself for some 
days in what is called the palace of St. Peter, the beginning 
of the Vatican, where, though there was still a party not 
much disposed to receive him, he was hailed with acclama- 
tions by the people, always eager for a new event, and not 
unmindful of the liberal largesse which an Emperor on his 
promotion, and especially when about to receive the much 
coveted coronation in St. Peter's, scattered around him. 
Louis proposed to restore the city to its ancient grandeur, 
and to promote its interests in every way, and flattered the 
people by receiving their vote of approval on the Capitol. 
"Going up to the Capitol," says Muratori, "he caused an 
oration to be made to the Boman people with many expres- 
sions of gratitude and praise, and with promises that Borne 
should be raised up to the stars." These honeyed words so 
pleased the people that he was declared Senator and Captain 
of Borne, and in a few days was crowned Emperor with 
every appearance of solemnity and grandeur. 

This would seem to be the first practical revival of the 
strange principle that Borne, as a city, not by its Emperor 
nor by its Pope, but in its own right, was the fountain of 



390 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

honour, the arbiter of the world — everything in short which 
in classical times its government was, and in the mediaeval 
ages, the Papacy wished to be. It is curious to account for 
such an article of belief ; for the populace of Rome had 
never in modern times possessed any of the characteristics 
of a great people, and was a mixed and debased race accord- 
ing to all authorities. This theory, however, was now for a 
time to affect the whole story of the city, and put a spas- 
modic life into her worn-out veins. It was the only thing 
which could have made such a story as that of Eienzi pos- 
sible, and it was strongly upheld by Petrarch and other 
eager and philosophic observers. The Bavarian Louis was, 
however, the first who frankly sought the confirmation of 
his election from the hands of the Roman people. One can- 
not, however, but find certain features of a farce in this 
solemn ceremony. 

The coronation processions which passed through the 
streets from Sta. Maria Maggoire, according to Sismondi, 
to St. Peter's, were splendid, the barons and counsellors, or 
buon-homini of Rome leading the cortege, and clothed in 
cloth of gold. " Behind the monarch marched four thou- 
sand men whom he had brought with him ; all the streets 
which he traversed were hung with rich tapestries." He 
was accompanied by a lawyer eminent in his profession, to 
watch over the perfect legality of every point in the cere- 
monial. The well-known Castruccio Castracani, who had 
followed him to Rome, was appointed by the Emperor to be 
his deputy as Senator, and to watch over the city ; and in 
this capacity he took his place in the procession in a tunic 
of crimson silk, embroidered with the words in gold on the 
breast, " He is what God wills " ; on the back, " He will be 
what God pleases." There was no Pope, it need not be 
said, to consecrate the new Emperor. The Pope was in 
Avignon, and his bitter enemy. There was not even a 
Bishop of Ostia to present the great monarch before St. 



i.] HOME IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 391 

Peter and the powers of heaven. Nevertheless the Church 
was not left out, though it was placed in a secondary posi- 
tion. Some kind of ceremony was gone through by the 
Bishop of Venice, or rather of Castello, the old name of 
that restless diocese, and the Bishop of Alecia, both of them 
deposed and under excommunication at the moment : but it 
was Sciarra Colonna who put the crown on Louis's head. 
The whole ceremonial was secular, almost pagan in its mean- 
ing, if meaning at all further than a general throwing of 
dust in the eyes of the world it could be said to have. But 
there is a fictitious gravity in the proceedings which seems 
almost to infer a sense of the prodigious folly of the assump- 
tion that these quite incompetent persons were qualified to 
confer, without any warrant for their deed, the greatest 
honour in Christendom upon the Bavarian. John XXII. 
was not a very noble Pope, but his sanction was a very dif- 
ferent matter from that of Sciarra Colonna. Xo doubt 
however the people of Borne — Lo Popolo, the blind mob 
so pulled about by its leaders, and made to assume one 
ridiculous attitude after another at their fancy — was flat- 
tered by the idea that it was from itself, as the imperial 
city, that the Emperor took the confirmation of his election 
and his crown. 

Immediately afterwards a still more unjustifiable act was 
performed by the Emperor thus settled in his imperial seat. 
Assisted by his excommunicated bishops and his rebellious 
laymen, Louis held, Muratori tells us, in the Piazza of St. 
Peter a gran parlamento, calling upon any one who would 
take upon him the defence of Jacques de Cahors, calling 
himself Pope John XXII. , to appear and answer the accusa- 
tions against him. 

"No one replied : and then there rose up the Syndic of that part of 
the Roman clergy who loved gold better than religion, and begged 
Louis to take proceedings against the said Jacques de Cahors. Various 
articles were then produced accusing the Pope of heresy and treason, 
and of having raised the cross (i.e. sent a crusade, probably the expe- 



392 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

dition of the Prince of the Morea in the chronicle) against the Romans. 
For which reasons the Bavarian declared Pope John to be deposed 
from the pontificate and to be guilty of heresy and treason, with vari- 
ous penalties which I leave without mention. On the 23rd of April, 
with the consent of the Roman people, a law was published that every 
Pope in the future ought to hold his court in Rome, and not to be 
absent more than three months in the year on pain of being deposed 
from the Papacy. Finally on the twelfth day of May, in the Piazza of 
San Pietro, Louis with his crown on his head, proposed to the multi- 
tude that they should elect a new Pope. Pietro de Corvara, a native 
of the Abbruzzi, of the order of the Friars Minor, a great hypocrite, 
was proposed : and the people, the greater part of whom hated Pope 
John because he was permanently on the other side of the Alps (de la 
dai monti), accepted the nomination. He assumed the name of Nico- 
las V. Before his consecration there was a promotion of seven false 
cardinals : and on the 22nd of May he was consecrated bishop by one 
of these, and afterwards received the Papal crown from the hands of 
the said Louis, who caused himself to be once more crowned Emperor 
by this his idol. 

" The brutality of Louis the Bavarian in arrogating to himself (adds 
Muratori) the authority of deposing a Pope lawfully elected, who had 
never fallen into heresy as was pretended : and to elect another, con- 
trary to the rites and canons of the Catholic Church, sickened all who 
had any conscience or light of reason, and pleased only the heretics 
and schismatics, both religious and secular, who filled the court of the 
Bavarian , and by whose counsels he was ruled. Monstrosity and im- 
piety could not be better declared and detested. And this was the 
step which completed the ruin of his interests in Italy." 

The apparition of this German court in Bonie, with its 
curious ceremonials following one upon another : the coro- 
nation in St. Peter's, so soon to be annulled by its repetition 
at the hands of the puppet Pope whom Louis had himself 
created, in the vain hope that a crown bestowed by hands 
nominally consecrated would be more real than that given 
by those of Sciarra Colonna — makes the most wonderful 
episode in the turbulent story. In the same way Henry IV. 
was crowned again and again — first in his tent, afterwards 
by his false Pope in St. Peter's, while Gregory VII. looked 
grimly on from St. Angelo, a besieged and helpless refugee, 
yet in the secret consciousness of all parties — the Emperor's 
supporters as well as his own — the only real fountain of 
honour, the sole man living from whom that crown could be 
received with full sanction of law and right. Perhaps when 



i.] ROME IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 393 

all is said, and we have fully acknowledged the failure of all 
the greater claims of the Papacy, we read its importance in 
these scenes more than in the loftiest pretensions of Gregory 
or of Innocent. II Bavaro felt to the bottom of his heart 
that he was no Emperor without the touch of those conse- 
crated hands. A fine bravado of triumphant citizens delight- 
ing to imagine that Rome could still confer all honours as 
the mother city of the world, was well enough for the popu- 
lace, though even for them the excommunicated bishops had 
to be brought in to lend a show of authenticity to the unjus- 
tifiable proceedings ; but the uneasy Teuton himself could 
not be contented even by this, and it is to be supposed felt 
that even an anti-pope was better than nothing. It is tempt- 
ing to inquire how Sciarra Colonna felt when the crown he 
had put on with such pride and triumph was placed again 
by the Neapolitan monk, false Pope among false cardinals, 
articles d l 'occasion, as the French say — on the head of the 
Bavarian. One cannot but feel that it must have been a 
humiliation for Colonna and for the city at this summit of 
vainglory and temporary power. 

The rest of the story of Sciarra and his emperor is quickly 
told, so far as Borne is concerned. Louis of Bavaria left the 
city in August of the same year. He had entered Rome in 
January amid the acclamations of the populace : he left it 
seven months later amid the hisses and abusive cries of the 
same people, carrying with him his anti-pope and probably 
Sciarra, who at all events took flight, his day being over, 
and died shortly after. Next day Stefano della Colonna, 
the true head of the house, arrived in Borne with Bartoldo 
Orsini, and took possession in the name of Pope John, no 
doubt with equal applause from the crowd which so short a 
time before had witnessed breathless his deposition, and 
accepted the false Nicolas in his place. Such was popular 
government in those days. The legate so valiantly defeated 
by Sciarra, and driven out of the gates according to the 



394 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

chronicle, returned in state with eight hundred knights at 
his back. 

We do not attempt to follow the history further than in 
those scenes which show how Rome lived, struggled, followed 
the impulse of its masters, and was flung from one side to the 
other at their pleasure, during this period of its history. The 
wonderful episode in that history which was about to open 
is better understood by the light of the events which 
roused Lo Popolo into wild excitement at one moment, and 
plunged them into disgust and discouragement the next. 

The following scene, however, has nothing to do with tu- 
mults of arms. It is a mere vignette from the much illus- 
trated story of the city. It relates the visit of what we 
should now call a Revivalist to Rome, a missionary friar, one 
of those startling preachers who abounded in the Middle 
Ages, and roused, as almost always in the history of human 
nature, tempests of shortdived penitence and reformation, 
with but little general effect even on the religious story of 
the time. Fra Venturino was a Dominican monk of Ber- 
gamo, who had already when he came to Rome the fame of a 
great preacher, and was attended by a multitude of his peni- 
tents, dressed in white with the sacred monogram I.H.S. 
on the red and white caps or hoods which they wore on their 
heads, and a dove with an olive branch on their breasts. 
They came chiefly from the north of Italy and were, accord- 
ing to the chronicle, honest and pious persons of good and 
gentle manners. They were well received in Florence, 
where many great families took them in, gave them good 
food, good beds, washed their feet, and showed them much 
charity. Then, with a still larger contingent of Florentines 
following his steps, the preacher came on to Rome. 

" It was said in Rome that he was coming to convert the Romans. 
"When he arrived he was received in San Sisto. There he preached to 
his own people, of whom there were many orderly and good. In the 
evening they sang Lauds. They had a standard of silk which was 
afterwards given to La Minerva (Sta. Maria sopra Minerva). At the 



i.] ROME IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 395 

present day it may still be seen there in the Chapel of Messer Latino. 
It was of green silk, long and large. Upon it was painted the figure 
of Sta. Maria, with angels on each side, playing upon viols, and St. 
Dominic and St. Peter Martyr and other prophets. Afterwards he 
preached in the Capitol, and all Rome went to hear him. The Komans 
were very attentive to hear him, quiet, and following carefully if he 
went wrong in his bad Latin. Then he preached and said that they 
ought to take off their shoes, for the place on which they stood was 
holy ground. And he said that Rome was a place of much holiness 
from the bodies of the saints who lay there, but that the Romans were 
wicked people : at which the Romans laughed. Then he asked a 
favour and a gift from the Romans. Fra Venturino said, ' Sirs, you 
are going to have one of your holidays which costs much money. It 
is not either for God or the saints : therefore you celebrate this idol- 
atry for the service of the Demon. Give the money to me. I will 
spend it for God to men in need, who cannot provide for themselves.' 
Then the Romans began to mock at him, and to say that he was mad : 
thus they said and that they would stay no longer : and rising up went 
away leaving him alone. Afterwards he preached in San Giovanni, 
but the Romans would not hear him, and would have driven him 
away. He then became angry and cursed them, and said that he had 
never seen people so perverse. He appeared no more, but departed 
secretly and went to Avignon, where the Pope forbade him to preach." 

We may conclude these scraps of familiar contemporary 
information with a companion picture which does not give a 
reassuring view of the state of the Church in Eome. It is 
the story of a priest elected to a great place and dignity 
who sought the confirmation of his election from the Pope 
at Avignon. 

"A monk of St. Paolo in Rome, Fra Monozello by name, who at 
the death of the Abbot had been elected to fill his place, appeared 
before Pope Benedict. This monk was a man who delighted in soci- 
ety, running about everywhere, seeing the dawn come in, playing the 
lute, a great musician and singer. He spent his life in a whirl, at the 
court, at all the weddings, and parties to the vineyards. So at least 
said the Romans. How sad it must have been for Pope Benedict to 
hear that a monk of his did nothing but sing and dance. When this 
man was chosen for Abbot, he appeared before the sanctity »of the 
Pope and said, ' Holy Father, I have been elected to San Paolo in 
Rome.' The Pope, who knew the condition of all who came to him, 
said, ' Can you sing ? ' The Abbot-elect replied, ' I can sing.' The 
Pope, ' I mean songs ' (la cantilena) . The Abbot-elect answered, ' I 
know concerted songs' (il canzone sacro). The Pope asked again, 
' Can you play instruments' (sonare) ? He answered, ' I can.' The 
Pope, 'I ask can you play (tonare) the organ and the lute?' The 
other answered, 'Too well.' Then the Pope changed his tone and 



396 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

said, ' Do you think it is a suitable thing for the Abbot of the vener- 
able monastery of San Paolo to be a buffoon ? Go about your 
business.' " 

Thus it would appear that, careless as they might be and 
full of other thoughts, the Popes in Avignon still kept a 
watchful eye upon the Church at Rome. These are but 
anecdotes with which the historian of Eienzi prepares his 
tragic story. They throw a little familiar light, the lan- 
thorn of a bystander, upon the town, so great yet so petty, 
always clinging to the pretensions of a greatness which it 
could not forget, but wholly unworthy of that place in the 
world which its remote fathers of antiquity had won, and 
incapable even when a momentary power fell into its hands 
of using it, or of perceiving in the midst of its greedy rush 
at temporary advantage what its true interests were — 
insubordinate, reckless, unthinking, ready to rush to arms 
when the great bell rang from the Capitol a stuormo, with- 
out pausing to ask which side they were on, with the Guelf s 
one day and the Ghibellines the next, shouting for the 
Emperor, yet terror-stricken at the name of the Pope — 
obeying with surly reluctance their masters the barons, 
but as ready as a handful of tow to take flame, and always 
rebellious whatever might be the occasion. This is how the 
Eoman Popolo of the fourteenth century appear through the 
eyes of the spectators of its strange ways. Fierce to fight, 
but completely without object except a local one for their 
fighting, ready to rebel but always disgusted when made to 
obey, entertaining a wonderful idea of their own claims by 
right of their classic descent and connection with the great 
names of antiquity, while on the other hand they allowed 
the noblest relics of those times to crumble into irremedi- 
able ruin. 

The other Eome, the patrician side, with all its glitter 
and splendour of the picturesque, is on the surface a much 
finer picture. The romance of the time lay altogether with 



i.] SOME IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 397 

the noble houses which had grown up in mediaeval Rome, 
sometimes seizing a dubious title from an ancient Roman 
potentate, but most often springing from some stronghold 
in the adjacent country or the mountains, races which had 
developed and grown upon highway robbery and the op- 
pression of those weaker than themselves, yet always with 
a surface of chivalry which deceived the world. The family 
which was greatest and strongest is fortunately the one we 
know most about. The house of Colonna had the good 
luck to discover in his youth and extend a warm, if con- 
descending, friendship to the poet Petrarch, who was on his 
side the most fortunate poet who has lived in modern ages 
among men. He was in the midst of everything 111 at went 
on, to use our familiar phraseology, in his day : he was the 
friend and correspondent of every notable person from the 
Pope and the Emperor downward : only a poor ecclesiastic, 
but the best known and most celebrated man of his time. 
The very first of all his contemporaries to appreciate and 
divine what was in him was Giacomo Colonna, one of the 
sons of old Stefano, whom we have already seen in Rome. 
He was Bishop of Lombez in Gascony, and his elder brother 
Giovanni was a Cardinal. They were in the way of every 
preferment and advantage, as became the sons of so power- 
ful a house, but no promotion they attained has done so 
much for them with posterity as their friendship with this 
smooth-faced young priest of Vaucluse, to whom they were 
the kindest patrons and most faithful friends. 

Petrarch was but twenty-two, a student at Bologna when 
young Colonna, a boy himself, took, as we say, a fancy for 
him, " not knowing who I was or whence I came, and only 
by my dress perceiving that what he was I also was, a 
scholar." It was in his old age that Petrarch gave to an- 
other friend a description of this early patron, younger 
apparently than himself, who opened to him the doors of 
that higher social life which were not always open to a 



398 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

poet, even in those days when the patronage of the great 
was everything. "I think there never was a man in the 
world greater than he or more gracious, more kind, more 
able, more wise, more good, more moderate in good fortune, 
more constant and strong against adversity," he writes in 
the calm of his age, some forty years after the beginning of 
this friendship and long after the death of Giacomo Colonna. 
When the young bishop first went to his diocese Petrarch 
accompanied him. " Oh flying time, oh hurrying life ! " he 
cries. " Forty -four years have passed since then, but never 
have I spent so happy a summer." On his return from this 
visit the bishop made his friend acquainted with his brother 
Giovanni^ the Cardinal, a man "good and innocent more 
than Cardinals are wont to be." " And the same may be 
said," Petrarch adds, " of the other brothers, and of the 
magnanimous Stefano, their father, of whom, as Crispus 
says of Carthage, it is better to be silent than to say little." 
This is a description too good, perhaps, to be true of an 
entire family, especially of Roman nobles and ecclesiastics 
in the middle of the fourteenth century, between the dis- 
orderly and oppressed city of Pome, and the corrupt court 
of Avignon : but at least it shows the other point of view, 
the different aspect which the same man bears in differ- 
ent eyes: though Petrarch's enthusiasm for his matchless 
friends is perhaps as much too exalted as the denunciations 
of the populace and the popular orator are excessive on the 
other side. 

It was under this distinguished patronage that Petrarch 
received the great honour of his life, the laurel crown of the 
Altissimo Poeta, and furnished another splendid scene to the 
many which had taken place in Rome in the midst of all her 
troubles and distractions. The offer of this honour came 
to him at the same time from Paris and Rome, and it was 
to Cardinal Giovanni that he referred the question which 
he should accept : and he "was surrounded by the Colonnas 



i.] ROME IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 399 

when lie appeared at the Capitol to receive his crown. The 
Senator of the year was Orso, Conte d'Anquillara, who 
was the son-in-law of old Stefano Colonna, the husband of 
his daughter Agnes. The ceremony took place on Easter 
Sunday in the year 1341, the last day of Anquillara's office, 
and so settled by hirn in order that he might himself have 
the privilege of placing the laurel on the poet's head. 
Petrarch gives an account of the ceremony to his other 
patron King Robert of Naples, attributing this honour to the 
approbation and friendship of that monarch — which perhaps 
is a thing, necessary when any personage so great as a king 
interests himself in the glory of a poet. " Rome and the 
deserted palace of the Capitol were adorned with unusual 
delight," he says : " a small thing in itself one might say, 
but conspicuous by its novelty, and by the applause and 
pleasure of the Roman people, the custom of bestowing the 
laurel having not only been laid aside for many ages, but 
even forgotten, while the republic turned its thoughts to 
very different things — until now under thy auspices it was 
renewed in my person." "On the Capitol of Rome," the 
poet wrote to another correspondent,, "with a great con- 
course of people and immense joy, that which the king 
in Naples had decreed for me was executed. Orso Count 
d'Anquillara, Senator, a person of the highest intelligence, 
decorated me with the laurel : all went better than could 
have been believed or hoped," he adds, notwithstanding the 
absence of the King and of various great persons named — 
though among these Petrarch, with a policy and knowledge 
of the world which never failed him, does not name to his 
Neapolitan friends Cardinal Giovanni and Bishop Giacomo, 
the dearest of his companions, and his first and most faith- 
ful patrons, neither of whom were able to be present. Their 
family, however, evidently took the lead on this great occa- 
sion. Their brother Stefano pronounced an oration in 
honour of the laureate: he was crowned by their brother- 



400 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

in-law : and the great celebration culminated in a banquet 
in the Colonna palace, at which, no doubt, the father of all 
presided, with Colonnas young and old filling every corner. 
For they were a most abundant family — sons and grand- 
sons, Stefanos and Jannis without end, young ones of all 
the united families, enough to fill almost a whole quarter 
of Koine themselves and their retainers. "Their houses 
extended from the square of San Marcello to the Santi 
Apostoli," says Papencordt, the modern biographer of 
Kienzi. The ancient Mausoleum of Augustus, which has 
been put to so many uses, which was a theatre not very long 
ago, and is now, we believe a museum, was once the head- 
quarters and stronghold of the house. 

This ceremonial of the crowning of the poet was con- 
ducted with immense joy of the people, endless applause, 
a great concourse, and every splendour that was possible. 
So was the reception of II Bavaro a few years before ; so 
were the other strange scenes about to come. The popu- 
lace was always ready to form a great concourse, to shout 
and applaud, notwithstanding its own often miserable condi- 
tion, exposed to every outrage, and finding justice nowhere. 
But the reverse of the medal was not so attractive. Petrarch 
himself, departing from Kome with still the intoxicating 
applause of the city ringing in his ears, was scarcely out- 
side the walls before he and his party fell into the hands of 
armed robbers. It would be too long to tell, he says, how 
he got free ; but he was driven back to Kome, whence he 
set out again next day, "surrounded by a good escort of 
armed men." The ladroni armati who stopped the way 
might, for all one knows, wear the badge of the Colonnas 
somewhere under their armour, or at least find refuge in 
some of their strongholds. Such were the manners of the 
time, and such was specially the condition of Kome. It 
gave the crown of fame to the poet, but could not secure 
him a safe passage for a mile outside its gates. It still put 



I.] ROME IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 401 

forth pretensions, as on this, so in more important cases, to 
exercise an authority over all the nations, by which right it 
had pleased the city to give Louis of Bavaria the imperial 
crown ; but no citizen was safe unless he could protect him- 
self with his sword, and justice and the redress of wrong 
were things unknown. 

2d 




a ' ' %^f%^#?w^r T Y r' 



ON THE PINCIO. 



CHAPTEE II. 



THE DELIVERER. 



IT was in this age of disorder and anarchy that a child 
was born, of the humblest parentage, on the bank of 
the Tiber, in an out-of-the-way suburb, who was destined to 
become the hero of one of the strangest episodes of modern 
history. His father kept a little tavern to which the 
Roman burghers, pushing their walk a little beyond the 
walls, would naturally resort ; his mother, a laundress and 
water-carrier — one of those women who, with the port of a 
classical princess, balance on their heads in perfect poise 
and certainty the great copper vases which are still used 
for that purpose. It was the gossip of the time that Mad- 
dalena, the wife of Lorenzo, had not been without advent- 
ures in her youth. No less a person than Henry VII. had 
found shelter, it was said, in her little public-house when 
her husband was absent. He was in the dress of a pilgrim, 
but no doubt bore the mien of a gallant gentleman and daz- 
zled the eyes of the young landlady, who had no one to 

402 



ch. ii.] THE DELIVERER. 403 

protect her. When her son was a man it pleased him to 
suppose that from this meeting resulted the strange mixt- 
ure of democratic enthusiasm and love of pomp and power 
which was in his own nature. It was not much to be proud 
of, and yet he was proud of it. For all the world he was 
the son of the poor innkeeper, but within himself he felt 
the blood of an Emperor in his veins. Maddalena died 
young, and when her son began to weave the visions which 
helped to shape his life, was no longer there to clear her 
own reputation or to confirm him in his dream. 

These poor people had not so much as a surname to 
distinguish them. The boy Niccola was Cola di Rienzo, 
Nicolas the son of Laurence, as he is called in the Latin 
chronicles, according to that simplest of all rules of nomen- 
clature which has originated so many modern names. "He 
was from his youth nourished on the milk of eloquence ; a 
good grammarian, a better rhetorician, a fine writer," says 
his biographer. " Heavens, what a rapid reader he was ! 
He made great use of Livy, Seneca, Tully, and Valerius 
Maximus, and delighted much to tell forth the magnificence 
of Julius Caesar. All day long he studied the sculptured 
marbles that lie around Rome. There was no one like him 
for reading the ancient inscriptions. All the ancient writ- 
ings he put in choice Italian ; the marbles he interpreted. 
How often did he cry out, ' Where are these good Romans ? 
where is their high justice ? might I but have been born in 
their time ? ' He was a handsome man, and he adopted the 
profession of a notary." 

We are not told how or where Cola attained this knowl- 
edge. His father was a vassal of the Colonna, and it is 
possible that some of the barons coming and going may 
have been struck by the brilliant, eager countenance of 
the innkeeper's son, and helped him to the not extravagant 
amount of learning thus recorded. His own character, and 
the energy and ambition so strangely mingled with imagi- 



404 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

nation and the visionary temperament of a poet, would seem 
to have at once separated him from the humble world in 
which he was born. It is said by some that his youth was 
spent out of Rome, and that he only returned when about 
twenty, at the death of his father — a legend which would 
lend some show of evidence to the suggestion of his doubt- 
ful birth: but his biographer says nothing of this. It is. 
also said that it was the death of his brother, killed in some 
scuffle between the ever-contending parties of Colonna and 
Orsini, which gave his mind the first impulse towards the 
revolution which he accomplished in so remarkable a way. 
"He pondered long," says his biographer, "of revenging 
the blood of his brother; and long he pondered over the 
ill-governed city of Rome, and how to .set it right." But 
there is no definite record of his early life until it suddenly 
flashes into light in the public service of the city, and on an 
occasion of the greatest importance as well for himself as 
for Rome. 

This first public employment which discloses him at once 
to us was a mission from the thirteen Buoni Jiomini, some- 
r times called Caporoni, the heads of the different districts of 
the city, to Pope Clement VI. at Avignon, on the occasion 
of one of those temporary overturns of government which 
occurred from time to time, always of the briefest duration, 
but carrying on the traditions of the power of the people 
from age to age. He was apparently what we should call 
the spokesman of the deputation sent to explain the matter 
to the Pope, and to secure, if possible, some attention on 
the part of the Curia to the condition of the abandoned city. 

" His eloquence was so great that Pope Clement was much attracted 
towards him : the Pope much admired the fine style of Cola, and de- 
sired to see him every day. Upon which Cola spoke very freely and said 
that the Barons of Eome were highway robbers, that they were con- 
senting to murder, robbery, adultery, and every evil. He said that the 
city lay desolate, and the Pope began to entertain a very bad opinion of 
the Barons. " 



ii.] THE DELIVERER. 405 

"But," adds the chronicler, "by means of Messer Gio- 
vanni of the Colonna, Cardinal, great misfortunes happened 
to him, and he was reduced to such poverty and sickness 
that he might as well have been sent to the hospital. He 
lay like a snake in the sun. But he who had cast him 
down, the very same person raised him up again. Messer 
Giovanni brought him again before the Pope and had him 
restored to favour. And having thus been restored to grace 
he was made notary of the Cammora in Borne, so that he 
returned with great joy to the city." 

This succinct narrative will perhaps be a little more 
clear if slightly expanded : the chief object of the Boman 
envoy was to disclose the crimes of the " barons," whose true 
character Cola thus described to the Pope, on the part of the 
leaders of a sudden revolt, a sort of prophetical anticipation 
of his own, which had seized the power out of the hands of 
the two Senators and conferred it upon thirteen Buonl 
liomini, heads of the people, who took the charge in the name 
of the Pope and professed, as was usual in its absence, an 
almost extravagant devotion to the Papal authority. The 
embassy was specially charged with the prayers and en- 
treaties of the people that the Pope would return and 
resume the government of the city : and also that he would 
proclaim another jubilee — the great festival, accompanied 
by every kind of indulgence and pious promise to the pil- 
grims, attracted by it from all the ends of the earth to Borne 
— which had been first instituted by Pope Boniface VIII. 
in 1300 with the intention of being repeated once every cen- 
tury only. But a century is a long time; and the jubilee 
was most profitable, bringing much money and many gifts 
both to the State and the Church. The citizens were there- 
fore very anxious to secure its repetition in 1350, and its 
future celebration every fifty years. The Pope graciously 
accorded the jubilee to the prayers of the Bomans, and 
accepted their homage and desire for his return, promising 



406 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

vaguely that he would do so in the jubilee year if not before. 
So that whatever afterwards happened to the secretary or 
spokesman, the object of the mission was attained. 

Elated by this fulfilment of their wishes, and evidently at 
the moment of his highest favour with the Pope, Cola sent 
a letter announcing this success to the authorities in Rome, 
which is the first word we hear from his own mouth. It is 
dated from Avignon, in the year 1343. He was then about 
thirty, in the full ardour of young manhood, full of visionary 
hopes and schemes for the restoration of the glories of 
Rome. The style of the letter, which was so much admired 
in those days, is too florid and ornate for the taste of a 
severer period, notwithstanding that his composition re- 
ceived the applause of Petrarch, and was much admired by 
all his contemporaries. He begins by describing himself 
as the "consul of orphans, widows and the poor, and the 
humble messenger of the people." 

"Let your mountains tremble with happiness, let your hills clothe 
themselves with joy, and peace and gladness fill the valleys. Let the 
city arise from her long course of misfortunes, let her re-ascend the 
throne of her ancient magnificence, let her throw aside the weeds of 
widowhood and clothe herself with the garments of a bride. For the 
heavens have been opened to us and from the glory of the Heavenly 
Father has issued the light of Jesus Christ, from which shines forth 
that of the Holy Spirit. Now that the Lord has done this miracle, 
brethren beloved, see that you clear out of your city the thorns and 
the roots of vice, to receive with the perfume of new virtue the Bride- 
groom who is coming. We exhort you with burning tears, with tears 
of joy, to put aside the sword, to extinguish the flames of battle, to 
receive these divine gifts with a heart full of purity and gratitude, to 
glorify with songs and thanksgiving the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
and also to give humble thanks to His Vicar, and to raise to that su- 
preme Pontiff, in the Capitol or in the amphitheatre, a statue adorned 
with purple and gold that the joyous and glorious recollection may 
endure for ever. Who indeed has adorned his country with such 
glory among the Ciceros, the Caesars, Metullus, or Fabius, who are 
celebrated as liberators in our old annals and whose statues we adorn 
with precious stones because of their virtues ? These men have ob- 
tained passing triumphs by war, by the calamities of the world, by the 
shedding of blood : but he, by our prayers and for the life, the salva- 
tion and the joy of all, has won in our eyes and in those of posterity 
an immortal triumph." 




wt ~ 

*&* til 



j? 



-r>7«5>-: 









THEATKE OF MARCELLUS. ^ -^ aCe P^ 40(3. 



ii.] THE DELIVERER. 409 

It is like enough that these extravagant phrases expressed 
an exultation which was sufficiently genuine and sincere ; 
for while he was absent the city of Rome desired and longed 
for its Pope, although when present it might do everything 
in its power to shake off his yoke. And Cola the ambassa- 
dor, in whose mind as yet his own great scheme had not 
taken shape, might well believe that the gracious Pope who 
flattered him by such attention, who admitted him so freely 
to his august presence, and to whom he was as one who 
playeth very sweetly upon an instrument, was the man of 
all men to bring back again from anarchy and tumult the 
imperial city. He had even given up, it would seem, his 
enthusiasm for the classic heroes in this moment of hope 
from a more living and present source of help. 

This elation however did not last. The Cardinal Giovanni 
Colonna, son of old Stefano, the head of that great house, of 
whose magnificent old age Petrarch speaks with so much 
enthusiasm, himself a man of many accomplishments, a 
scholar and patron of the arts — and to crown all, as has 
been said, the dear friend and patron of the poet — was one 
of the most important members of the court at Avignon, 
when the deputation from Rome, with that eloquent young 
plebeian as its interpreter, appeared before the Pope. We 
may imagine that its first great success, and the pleasure 
which the Pope took in the conversation of Cola, must have 
happened during some temporary absence of the Cardinal, 
whose interest in the affairs of his native city would be 
undoubted. And it was natural that he should be a little 
scornful of the ambassadors of the people, and of the orator 
who was the son of Rienzo of the wine-shop, and very indig- 
nant at the account given by the advocate of lo Popolo, of 
the barons and their behaviour. The Colonna were, in fact, 
the least tyrannical of the tyrants ; they were the noblest of 
all the Roman houses, and no doubt the public sentiment 
against the nobles in general might sometimes do a more 



410 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

enlightened family wrong. Certainly it is hard to reconcile 
the pictures of this house as given by Petrarch with the cruel 
tyranny of which all the nobles were accused. This no doubt 
was the reason why, after the triumph of that letter, the 
consent of the Pope to the prayer of the citizens, and his 
interest in Cola's tale and descriptions, the young orator fell 
under the shadow of courtly displeasure, and after that 
intoxication of victory suffered all those pangs of neglect 
which so often end the temporary triumph of a success at 
court. The story is all vague, and we have no explanation 
why he should have lingered on in Avignon, unless perhaps 
with hopes of advancement founded on that evanescent 
favour, or perhaps in consequence of his illness. There is 
a forlorn touch in the description of the chronicler that " he 
lay like a snake in the sun," which is full of suggestion. 
The reader seems to see him hanging about the precincts of 
the court under the stately walls of the vast Papal palace, 
which now stands in gloomy greatness, absorbing all the 
light out of the landscape. It was new then, and glorious 
like a heavenly palace ; and sick and sad, disappointed and 
discouraged, the young envoy, lately so dazzled by the sun- 
shine of favour, would no doubt haunt the great doorway, 
seeking a sunny spot to keep himself warm, and waiting 
upon Providence. Probably the Cardinal, sweeping out and 
in, in his state, might perceive the young Eoman fallen from 
his temporary triumph, and be touched by pity for the 
orator who after all had done no harm with his pleading ; 
for was not Stefano Colonna again, in spite of all, Senator of 
Pome ? Let us hope that the companion at his elbow, the 
poet who formed part of his household, and who probably 
had heard, too, and admired, like Pope Clement, the parole 
ornate of the speaker, who, though so foolish as to assail 
with his eloquent tongue the nobles of the land, need not 
after all be left to perish on that account — was the person 
who pointed out to his patron the poor fellow in his cloak, 



ii.] THE DELIVERER. 411 

shivering in the mistral, that chill wind unknown in the 
midlands of Italy. It is certain that Petrarch here made 
Cola's acquaintance, and that Cardinal Colonna, remorseful 
to see the misery he had caused, took trouble to have his 
young countryman restored to favour, and procured him the 
appointment of Notary of the city, with which Cola returned 
to Rome — "fra i denti minacciava," says his biographer, 
swearing between his teeth. 

It was in 1344 that his promotion took place, and for 
some years after Cola performed the duties of his office cor- 
tesemente, with courtesy, the highest praise an Italian of his 
time could give. In this occupation he had boundless oppor- 
tunities of studying more closely the system of government 
which had resumed its full sway under the old familiar suc- 
cession of Senators, generally a Colonna and an Orsini. 
" He saw and knew," says the chronicler, himself growing 
vehement in the excitement of the subject, " the robbery 
of those dogs of the Capitol, the cruelty and injustice of 
those in power. In all the commune he did not find one 
good citizen who would render help." It would seem, though 
there is here little aid of dates, that he did not act precipi- 
tately, but, probably with the hope of being able himself 
to do something to remedy matters, kept silence while his 
heart burned, as long as silence was possible. But the 
moment came when he could do so no longer, and the little 
scene at the meeting of the Cammora, the City Council, 
stands out as clearly before us as if it had been a municipal 
assembly of the present day. We are not told what special 
question was before the meeting which proved the last 
straw of the burden of indignation and impatience which 
Cola at his table, writing with the silver pen which he 
thought more worthy than a goose quill for the dignity of 
his office, had to bear. (One wonders if he was the inventor, 
without knowing it, of that little instrument, the artificial 
pen of metal with which, chiefly, literature is manufactured 



412 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

in our days ? But silver is too soft and ductile to have 
ever become popular, and though very suitable to pour forth 
those mellifluous sentences in which the young spokesman 
of the Romans wrote to his chiefs from Avignon, would 
scarcely answer for the sterner purposes of the council to 
inscribe punishments or calculate fines withal.) One day, 
however, sitting in his place, writing down the decrees for 
those fines and penalties, sudden wrath seized upon the 
young scribe who already had called himself the consul of 
widows and orphans, and of the poor. 

" One day during a discussion on the subject of the taxes of Rome, 
he rose to his feet among all the Councillors and said, ' You are not 
good citizens, you who suck the blood of the poor and will not give 
them any help.' Then he admonished the officials and the Rectors 
that they ought rather to provide for the good government, lo buono 
stato, of their city of Rome. When the impetuous address of Cola 
di Rienzi was ended, one of the Colonna, who was called Andreozzo 
di Normanno, the Camarlengo, got up and struck him a ringing blow 
on the cheek : and another who was the Secretary of the Senate, 
Tomma de Fortifiocca, mocked him with an insulting sign. This was 
the end of their talking." 

We hear of no more remonstrances in the council. It is 
said that Cola was not a brave man, though we have so many 
proofs of courage afterwards that it is difficult to believe 
him to have been lacking in this particular. At all events 
he went out from that selfish and mocking assembly with his 
cheek tingling from the blow, and his heart burning more 
and more, to ponder over other means of moving the com- 
munity and helping Rome. 

The next incident opens up to us a curious world of sur- 
mise, and suggests to the imagination much that is unknown, 
in the lower regions of art, a crowd of secondary performers 
in that arena, the unknown painters, the half-workmen, 
half-artists, who form a background wherever a school of 
art exists. Cola perhaps may have had relations with some 
of these half-developed artists, not sufficiently advanced to 
paint an altar-piece, the scholars or lesser brethren of some 



ii.] THE DELIVERER. 413 

local bottega. There was little native art at any time in 
Rome. The ancient and but dimly recorded work of the 
Cosimati, the only Roman school, is lost in the mists, and 
was over and ended in the fourteenth century. But there 
must have been some humble survival of trained workmen 
capable at least of mural decorations if no more. Pondering 
long how to reach the public, Cola seems to have bethought 
himself of this humble instrument of art. As we do not 
hear before of any such method of instructing the i:>eople, 
we may be allowed to suppose it was his invention as well 
as the silver pen. His active brain was- buzzing with new 
things in every way, both great and small, and this was the 
first device he hit upon. Even the poorest art must have 
been of use in the absence of books for the illustration of 
sacred story and the instruction of the ignorant, and it was 
at this kind of instantaneous effect that Cola aimed. He 
had the confidence of the visionary that the evil state of 
affairs needed only to be known to produce instant reforma- 
tion. The grievance over and over again insisted upon by 
his biographer, and which was the burden of his outburst in 
the council, was that " no one would help " — non si trovava 
uno baon Oittatino, die lo volesse adjutare. Did they but 
know, the common people, how they were oppressed, and the 
nobles what oppressors they were, it was surely certain that 
every one would help, and that all would go right, and the 
buono stato be established once more. 

Here is the strange way in which Cola for the first time 
publicly "admonished the rectors and the people to do 
well, by a similitude." 

" A similitude," says his biographer, " which he caused to be painted 
on the palace of the Capitol in front of the market, on the wall above 
the Cammora (Council Chamber). Here was painted an allegory in 
the following form — namely, a great sea with horrible waves, and 
much disturbed. In the midst of this sea was a ship, almost wrecked, 
without helm or sails. In this ship, in great peril, was a woman, a 
widow, clothed in black, bound with a girdle of sadness, her face dis- 
figured, her hair floating wildly, as if she would have wept. She was 



414 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

kneeling, her hands crossed, beating her breast and ready to perish. 
The superscription over her was This is Borne. Round this ship were 
four other ships wrecked : their sails torn away, their oars broken, 
their rudders lost. In each one was a woman smothered and dead. 
The first was called Babylon ; the second Carthage ; the third Troy ; 
the fourth Jerusalem. Written above was : These cities by injustice 
perished and came to nothing. A label proceeding from the women 
dead bore the lines : 

' Once were we raised o'er lords and rulers all, 
And now we wait, Oh Rome, to see thee fall.' 

' ' On the left hand were two islands : on one of these was a woman 
sitting shamefaced with an inscription over her This is Italy. And 
she spoke and said : 

' Once had'st thou power o'er every land, 
I only now, thy sister, hold thy hand.' 

"On the other island were four women, with their hands at their 
throats, kneeling on their knees, in great sadness, and speaking thus : 

' By many virtues once accompanied 
Thou on the sea goest now abandoned.' 

"These were the four Cardinal virtues, Temperance, Justice, Pru- 
dence and Fortitude. On the other side was another little isle, and on 
this islet was a woman kneeling, her hands stretched out to heaven as 
if she prayed. She was clothed in white and her name was Christian 
Faith : and this is what her verse said : 

' Oh noblest Father, lord and leader mine, 
Where shall I be if Rome sink and decline? ' 

" Above on the right of the picture were four kinds of winged creat- 
ures who breathed and blew upon the sea, creating a storm and driving 
the sinking ship that it might perish. The first order were Lions, 
Wolves, and Bears, and were thus labelled : These are the powerful 
Barons and the wicked Officials. The second order were Dogs, Pigs, 
and Goats, and over them was written : These are the evil counsellors, 
the followers of the nobles. The third order were Sheep, Goats, and 
Foxes, and the label : These are the false officials, Judges and Notaries. 
The fourth order were Hares, Cats, and Monkeys, and their label: 
lliese, are the Beople, Thieves, Murderers, Adulterers, and Spoilers of 
Men. Above was the sky : in the midst the Majesty Divine as though 
coming to Judgment, two swords coming from His mouth. On one 
side stood St. Peter, and on the other St. Paul praying. When the 
people saw this similitude with these figures every one marvelled." 

Who painted this strange allegory, and how the work could 
be done in secret, in such a public place, so as to be suddenly 
revealed as a surprise to the astonished crowd, we have no 
means of knowing. It would be, no doubt, of the rudest art, 



ii.] THE DELIVERER. 415 

probably such a scroll as might be printed off in a hundred 
examples and pasted on the walls by our readier methods, 
not much above the original drawings of our pavements. 
We can imagine the simplicity of the symbolism, the agi- 
tated sea in curved lines, the galleys dropping out of the 
picture, the symbolical figures with their mottoes. The 
painting must have been executed by the light of early dawn, 
or under cover of some license to which Cola himself as an 
official had a right, perhaps behind the veil of a scaffolding 
— put up on some pretence of necessary repairs : and sud- 
denly blazing forth upon the people in the brightness of 
the morning, when the early life of Rome began again, and 
suitors and litigants began to cluster on the great steps, each 
with his private grievance, his lawsuit or complaint. What 
a sensation must that have occasioned as gazer after gazer 
caught sight of the fresh colours glowing on what was a 
blank wall the day before ! The strange inscriptions in 
their doggerel lines, mystic enough to pique every intelli- 
gence, simple enough to be comprehensible by the crowd, 
would be read by one and another to show their learning 
over the heads of the multitude. How strange a thing, 
catching every eye ! No doubt the plan of it, so unusual an 
appeal to the popular understanding, was Cola's ; but who 
could the artist be who painted that " similitude " ? Not 
any one, we should suppose, who lived to make a name for 
himself — as indeed, so far as we know, there were none 
such in Rome. 

This pictorial instruction was for the poor : it placed 
before them Rome, their city, for love of which they were 
always capable of being roused to at least a temporary en- 
thusiasm—struggling and unhappy, cheated by those she 
most trusted, ravaged by small and great, in clanger of final 
and hopeless shipwreck. In all her ancient greatness, the 
peer and sister of the splendid cities of the antique world, 
and like them falling into a ruin which in her case might 



416 THE MAKERS OF MODERN" ROME. [chap. 

yet be avoided, the suggestion was one which was admirably 
fitted to stir and move the spectators, all of them proud of 
the name of Roman, and deeply conscious of ill-government 
and suffering. This, however, was but one side of the work 
which he had set himself to do. A short time after, when 
his picture had become the subject of all tongues in Rome, 
Cola the notary invited the nobles and notables of the city 
to meet in the Church of St. John Lateran to hear him 
expound a certain inscription there which had hitherto (we 
are told) baffled all interpreters. It must be supposed that 
he stood high in the favour of the Church, and of Raymond 
the Bishop of Orvieto, the Pope's representative, or he would 
scarcely have been permitted to use the great basilica for 
such a purpose. 

The Church of the Lateran, however, as we know from 
various sources, was in an almost ruined state, nearly roof- 
less and probably, in consequence, open to invasions of such 
a kind. Cola must have already secured the attention of 
Rome in all circles, notwithstanding that box on the ear 
with which Andreozzo of the Colonna had tried to silence 
him. He was taken by some for a burlatore, a man who was 
a great jest and out of whom much amusement could be got ; 
and this was the aspect in which he appeared to one portion 
of society, to the young barons and gilded youth of Rome 
— a delusion to which he would seem to have temporarily 
lent himself, in order to diffuse his doctrine ; while the more 
serious part of the aristocracy seem to have become curious 
at least to hear what he had to say, and prescient of mean- 
ings in him which it would be well to keep in order by better 
means than the simple method of Andreozzo. The working 
of Cola's own mind it is less easy to trace. His picture had 
been such an allegory as the age loved, broad enough and 
simple enough at the same time to reach the common level 
of understanding. When he addressed himself to the higher 
class, it was with an instinctive sense of the difference, but 



ii.] THE DELIVERER. 417 

without perhaps a very clear perception what that difference 
was, or how to bear himself before this novel audience. 
Perhaps he was right in believing that a striking spectacle 
was the best thing to startle the aristocrats into attention : 
perhaps he thought it well to take advantage of the notion 
that Cola of Kienzo was more or less a buffoon, and that a 
speech of his was likely to be amusing whatever else it might 
be. The dress which his biographer describes minutely, and 
which had evidently been very carefully prepared, seems to 
favour this idea. 



' ' Not much time passed (after the exhibition of the picture) before 
he admonished the people by a fine sermon in the vulgar tongue, which 
he made in St. John Lateran. On the wall behind the choir, he had 
fixed a great and magnificent plate of metal inscribed with ancient letters, 
which none could read or interpret except he alone. Round this tablet 
he had caused several figures to be painted which represented the 
Senate of Rome conceding the authority over the city to the Emperor 
Vespasian. In the midst of the Church was erected a platform (un 
parlatorio) with seats upon it, covered with carpets and curtains — and 
upon this were gathered many great personages, among whom were 
Stefano Colonna, and Giovanni Colonna his son, who were the great- 
est and most magnificent in the city. There were also many wise and 
learned men, Judges and Decretalists, and many persons of authority. 
Cola di Rienzo came upon the stage among these great people. He 
was dressed in a tunic and cape after the German fashion, with a hood 
up to his throat in fine white cloth, and a little white cap on his head. 
On the round of his cap were crowns of gold, the one in the front 
being divided by a sword made in silver, the point of which was stuck 
through the crown. He came out very boldly, and when silence was 
procured he made a fine sermon with many beautiful words, and said 
that Rome was beaten down and lay on the ground, and could not see 
where she lay, for her eyes were torn out of her head. Her eyes were 
the Pope and the Emperor, both of whom Rome had lost by the wicked- 
ness of her citizens. Then he said (pointing to the pictured figures), 
' Behold, what was the magnificence of the Senate when it gave the 
authority to the Emperor.' He then read, a paper in which was 
written the interpretation of the inscription, which was the act by 
which the imperial power was given by the people of Rome to Ves- 
pasian. Firstly that Vespasian should have the power to make good 
laws, and to make alliances with any whom he pleased, and that he 
should be entitled to increase or diminish the garden of Borne, that 
is Raly : and that he should give accounts less or more as he would. 
He might also- raise men to be dukes and kings, put them up or pull 
them down, destroy or rebuild cities, divert rivers out of their beds to 
flow in another channel, put on taxes or abolish them at his pleasure. 



418 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

All these things the Romans gave to Vespasian according to their 
Charter to which Tiberius Ctesar consented. He then put aside that 
paper and said, ' Sirs, such was the majesty of the people of Rome 
that it was they who conferred this authority upon the Emperor. 
Now they have lost it altogether.' Then he entered more fully into 
the question and said, ' Romans, you do not live in peace : your lands 
are not cultivated. The Jubilee is approaching and you have no pro- 
vision of grain or food for the people who are coming, who will find 
themselves unprovided for, and who will take up stones in the rage of 
their hunger : but neither will the stones be enough for such a mul- 
titude.' Then concluding he added: ' I pray you keep the peace.' 
Then he said this parable : ' Sirs, I know that many people make a 
mock at me for what I do and say. And why ? For envy. But I 
thank God there are three things which consume the slanderers. The 
first luxury, the second jealousy, the third envy.' When he had ended 
the sermon and come down, he was much lauded by the people." 

The inscription thus set before the people was the bronze 
table, called the Lex Regia. Why it was that no one had 
been able to interpret it up to that moment we are not told. 
Learning was at a very low ebb, and the importance of such 
great documents whether in metal or parchment was as yet 
but little recognised. This was evidently one of the results 
of Cola's studies of the old inscriptions of which we are told 
in the earliest chapter of his career. It had formed "Dart 
of an altar in the Lateran Church, being placed there as a 
handy thing for the purpose in apparent ignorance of any 
better use for it, by Pope Boniface VIII. when he restored 
the church. No doubt some of the feeble reparations that 
were going on had brought the storied stone under Cola's 
notice, and he had interest enough to have it removed from 
so inappropriate a place. It is now let into the wall in the 
Hall of the Faun on the Capitol. 

We have here an instance not only of the exaltation of 
Cola's mind and thoughts, imaginative and ardent, and his 
possession by the one idea of Roman greatness, but also of 
his privileges and power at this moment, before he had as 
yet struck a blow or made a step towards his future position. 
That he should have been allowed to displace the tablet 
from the altar (which however may have been done in the 



ii.] THE DELIVERER. 419 

course of the repairs) to set it up iu that conspicuous posi- 
tion, and to use the church, he a layman and a plebeian, for 
his own objects, testifies to very strong support and privi- 
lege. The influence of the Pope must have been at his 
back, and the resources of the Church thrown open to him. 
Neither his audacious speech nor his constant denunciation 
of barons and officials seem to have been attended by the 
risks we should have expected. Either the authorities must 
have been very magnanimous, or he was well protected by 
some power they did not choose to encounter. Some doubt 
as to his sanity or his seriousness seems to have existed 
among them. Giovanni Colonna, familiarly Janni, grandson 
of old Stefano, a brilliant young gallant likely to grow into 
a fine soldier, the hope of the house, invited him constantly 
to entertainments where all the gilded youth of Rome gath- 
ered as to a play to hear him talk. When he said, " I shall 
be a great lord, perhaps even emperor," the youths gave 
vent to shouts of laughter. " All the barons were full of it, 
some encouraging him, some disposed to cut off his head. 
But nothing was done to him. How many things he proph- 
esied about the state of the city, and the generous rule it 
required ! " Rome listened and was excited or amused 
according to its mood, but nothing was done either to con- 
form that rule to his demands or to stop the bold reformer. 
By this time it had become the passion of his life, and 
the occupation of all his leisure. He could think of nothing 
but how to persuade the people, how to make their condition 
clear to them. Once more his painter friends, the journey- 
men of the bottega, whoever they were, came to his aid and 
painted him again a picture, this time on the wall of St. 
Angelo in Pescheria, which we may suppose to have been 
Cola's parish church, as it continually appears in the narra- 
tive — where once more they set forth in ever bolder sym- 
bolism the condition of Rome. Again she was represented 
as an aged woman, this time in the midst of a great confla- 



420 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

gration, half consumed, but watched over by an angel in 
all the glories of white attire and flaming sword, ready to 
rescue her from the flames, under the superintendence of 
St. Peter and St. Paul who looked on from a tower, calling 
to the angel to " succour her who gave shelter to us " ; while 
a white dove fluttered down from the skies with a crown of 
myrtle to be placed upon the head of the woman, and the 
legend bore "I see the time of the great justice — and thou, 
wait for it." Once more the crowd collected, the picture 
was discussed and what it meant questioned and expounded. 
There were some who shook their heads and said that more 
was wanted than pictures to amend the state of affairs ; but 
it may easily be supposed that as these successive allegories 
were represented before them, in a language which every 
one could understand, the feeling grew, and that there 
would be little else talked about in Rome but those strange 
writings on the walls and what their meanings were. The 
picture given by Lord Lytton in his novel of JRienzi, of 
this agitated moment of history, is very faithful to the 
facts, and gives a most animated description of the scenes ; 
though in the latter part of his story he prefers romance 
to history. 

All these incidents however open to our eyes side glimpses ■ 
of the other Pome underneath the surface, which was oc- 
cupied by contending nobles and magnificent houses, and 
all the little events and picturesque episodes with which a 
predominant aristocracy amused the world. If Mr. Brown- 
ing had expounded Rome once more on a graver subject, 
as he did once in The Ring and the Book, what groups he 
might have set before us ! The painters who had as yet 
produced no one known to fame, but who, always impres- 
sionable, would be agitated through all the depths of their 
workshops by the breath of revolution, the hope of some- 
thing fine to come, would have taken up a portion of the 
foreground : for with the withdrawal of the Pope and the 



ii.] THE DELIVERER. 421 

court, the occupation of a body of artist workmen, good for 
little more than decoration, ecclesiastical or domestic, must 
have suffered greatly : and none can be more easily touched 
by the agitation of new and aspiring thought than men 
whose very trade requires a certain touch of inspiration, a 
stimulus of fancy. No doubt in the studios there were 
many young men who had grown up with Cola, who had 
hung upon his impassioned talk before it was known to the 
worldj and heard his vague and exalted schemes for Eome, 
for the renovation of all her ancient glories, not forgetting 
new magnificences of sculpture and of painting worthy of 
the renovated city, the mistress of the world. Their eager 
talk and discussions, their knowledge of his ways and 
thoughts, the old inscriptions he had shown them, the new 
hopes which he had described in his glowing language, 
must have filled with excitement all those bottegas, perched 
among the ruins, those workshops planned out of aban- 
doned palaces, the haunt, of the Roman youth who were not 
gentlemen but workmen, and to whom Janni Colonna and 
his laughing companions, who thought Cola so great a jest 
in his mad brilliancy, were magnificent young patrons half 
admired, half abhorred. How great a pride it must have 
been to be taken into Cola's confidence, to reduce to the 
laws of possible representation those " similitudes " of his, 
the stormy sea with its galleys and its islets, the blaze of 
the fatal fire : and to hurry out by dawn, a whole band of 
them, in all the delight of conspiracy, to dash forth the 
joint conception on the wall, and help him to read his 
lesson to the people ! 

And Browning would have found another Eome still to 
illustrate in the priests, the humbler clergy, the cure of St. 
Angelo in the Fishmarket, and so many more, of the people 
yet over the people, the humble churchmen with their little 
learning, just enough to understand a classical name or 
allusion, some of whom must have helped Cola himself to 



422 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

his Latin, and pored with him over his inscriptions, and 
taken fire from his enthusiasm as a mind half trained, with- 
out the limitations that come with completer knowledge, is 
apt to do — feeling everything to be possible and ignoring 
the difficulties and inevitable disasters of revolution. The 
great ideal of the Church always hovering in the air before 
the visionary priest, and the evident and simple reason why 
it failed in this case from the absence of the Pope, and the 
widowhood of the city, must have so tempered the classical 
symbolism of the leader as to make his dreams seem pos- 
sible to men so little knowing the reality of things, and so 
confident that with the strength of their devotion and the 
purity of their aims everything could be accomplished. To 
such minds the possible and impossible have no existence, 
the world itself is such a thing as dreams are made of, and 
the complete reformation of all things, the heavens and the 
earth in which shall dwell righteousness, are always attain- 
able and near at hand, if only the effort to reach them were 
strong enough, and the minds of the oppressed properly 
enlightened. No one has sufficiently set forth, though 
many have essayed to do so, this loftiness of human futility, 
this wild faith of inexperience and partial ignorance, which 
indeed sometimes does for a moment at least carry every- 
thing before it in the frenzy of enthusiasm and faith. 

On the other side were Janni Colonna and his comrades, 
the young Savelli, Gaetani, all the gallant band, careless of 
all things, secure in their nobility, in that easy confidence 
of rank and birth which is perhaps the most picturesque of 
all circumstances, and one of the most exhilarating, making 
its possessor certain above all logic that for him the sun 
shines and the world goes round. There were all varieties 
among these young nobles as among other classes of men; 
some were bons princes, careless but not unthoughtful in 
any cruel way of others, if only they could be made to 
understand that their triumphant career was anyhow hurt- 



ii.] THE DELIVERER. 423 

fill of others — a difficult thing always to realise. The 
Colormas apart from their feuds and conflicts were gener- 
ally bons princes. They were not a race of oppressors ; 
they loved the arts and petted their special poet, who hap- 
pened at that moment to be the great poet of Italy, and no 
doubt admired the eloquent Cola and were delighted with 
his discourses and sallies, though they might find a spice of 
ridicule in them, as when he said he was to be a great seigneur 
or even emperor. That was his jest, could not one see the 
twinkle in his eye ? And probably old Stefano, the noble 
grandsire, would smile too as he heard the laughter of the 
boys, and think not unkindly of the mad notary with his 
enthusiasms, which would no doubt soon enough be quenched 
out of him, as was the case with most men when experience 
came with years to correct those not ungenerous follies of 
youth. The great churchmen would seem to have been still 
more tolerant to Cola — glad to find this unexpected aux- 
iliary who helped to hold the balance in favour of the Pope, 
and keep the nobles in check. 

In the meantime Cola proceeded with his warnings, and 
by and by with more strenuous preparation. We come to a 
date fortunately when we read of a sudden issue of potent 
words which came forth like the handwriting on the wall 
one morning, on February 15th, 1347. " In a short time 
the Romans shall return to their ancient good government." 
In brievo tempo — the actual sonorous words sounding forth 
large and noble like flute and trumpet in our ear, are worth 
quoting for the sound if no more : In brievo tempo I Romani 
tornaraco a lo loro antico buono stato. What a thrill of ex- 
citement to turn round a sudden corner and find this facing 
you on the church wall, words that were not there yester- 
day ! Lo antico buono stato ! the most skilful watchword, 
which thereafter became the special symbol of the new 
reformation. It is after this that we hear of the gathering 
of a little secret assembly in some quiet spot on the Aven- 



424 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

tine, " a secret place " — where on some privately arranged 
occasion there came serious men from all parts of the city, 
"many Romans of importance and buoni homini," which was 
the title, as we have seen, given to the popular leaders. 
"And among them were some of the gentry (cavalerotti) 
and rich merchants " — to consider what could be done to 
restore the good government (Jo buono stato) of the city of 
Rome. 

"Among whom Cola rose to his feet, and narrated, weeping, the 
misery, servitude and peril in which lay the city. And also what 
once was the great and lordly state which the Romans were wont to 
enjoy. He also spoke of the loss of all the surrounding country which 
had once been in subjection to Rome. And all this he related with 
tears, the whole assembly weeping with him. Then he concluded and 
said that it behoved them to serve the cause of peace and justice, and 
consoled them adding : ' Be not afraid in respect to money, for the 
Roman Cammora has much and inestimable returns.' In the first 
place the fires : each smoke paying four soldi, from Cepranno to the 
Porta della Paglia. This amounts to a hundred thousand florins. 
From the salt tax a hundred thousand florins. Then come the gates 
of Rome and the castles, and the dues there amount to a hundred 
thousand florins which is sent to his Holiness the Pope, and that his 
Vicar knows. Then he said, ' Sirs, do not believe that it is by the 
consent or will of the Pope that so many of the citizens lay violent 
hands on the goods of the Churoh.' By these parables the souls of 
the assembly were kindled. And many other things he said weeping. 
Then they deliberated how to restore the Buono Stato. And every 
one swore this upon the Holy Gospels — (in the Italian ' in the letter, ' 
by a recorded act) . ' ' 

It appears very probable by the allusion to the Pope's 
Vicar that he was present at this secret assembly. At all 
events he was informed of all that was done, and took part 
in the first overt act of the revolution. To give fuller war- 
rant for these secret plans and conspiracies, the state of the 
city went on growing worse every day. The two parties, 
that of Colonna, and that of Orsini, so balanced each other, 
the one availing itself of every incident which could dis- 
credit and put at a disadvantage the other, that justice and 
law were brought to a standstill, every criminal finding a 
protector on one side or the other, and every kind of rapine 



n.] THE DELIVERER. 425 

and violence going unpunished. " The city was in great 
travail," our chronicler says, " it had no lord, murder and 
robbery went on on every side. Women were not safe 
either in convents or in their own houses. The labourer 
was robbed as he came back from his work, and even 
children were outraged ; and all this within the gates of 
Borne. The pilgrims making their way to the shrines of the 
Apostles were robbed and often murdered. The priests 
themselves were ready for every evil. Every wickedness 
flourished : there was no justice, no restraint : and neither 
was there any remedy for this state of things. He only 
was in the right who could prove himself so with the sword." 
All that the unfortunate people could do was to band them- 
selves together and fight, each for his own cause. 

In the month of April of the year 1347 this state of 
anarchy was at its height. Stefano Colonna had gone to 
Corneto for provisions, taking with him all the milice, the 
Garde National e or municipal police of Rome. Deprived 
even of this feeble support and without any means of keep- 
ing order, the Senators, Agapito Colonna and Robert Orsini, 
remained as helpless to subdue any rising as they were to 
regulate the internal affairs of the city. The conspirators 
naturally took advantage of this opportunity. They sent a 
town crier with sound of trumpet to call all men to prepare 
to come without arms to the Capitol, to the Buono Stato at 
the sound of the great bell. During the night Cola would 
seem to have kept vigil — it was the eve of Pentecost — in 
the Church of St. Angelo in Pescheria hearing " thirty 
masses of the Holy Ghost," says the chronicler, spending 
the night in devotion as we should say. At the hour of 
tierce, in the early morning, he came out of Church, having 
thus invoked with the greatest solemnity the aid of God. 
It was the 20th of May, a summer festival, when all Rome 
is glorious with sunshine, and the orange blossoms and the 
roses from every garden fill the air with sweetness. He was 



426 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

fully armed except his head, which was bare. A multitude 
of youths encircled him with sudden shouts and cheering, 
breaking the morning quiet, and startling the churchgoers 
hastening to an early mass, who must have stood gaping to 
see one banner after another roll out between them and the 
sky, issuing from the church doors. The first was red with 
letters of gold, painted with a figure of Eome seated on two 
lions, carrying an orb, and a palm in her hands — " un 
Mundo e una Palma " — signs of her universal sovereignty. 
" This was the Gonfalon of Liberty " — and it was carried 
by Cola Guallato distinguished as " Lo buon dicitore " — 
another orator like Bienzi himself. The second was white 
with an image of St. Paul, on the third was St. Peter and 
his keys. This last was carried by an old knight who, 
because he was a veteran, was conveyed in a carriage. By 
this time the great bell of the Capitol was ringing and the 
men who had been invited were hurrying there through all 
the streets. "Then Cola di Bienzo took all his courage, 
though not without fear, and went on alone with the Vicar 
of the Pope and went up to the Palace of the Capitol." 
There he addressed the crowd, making a bellissima diceria 
upon the misery and anarchy in Koine, saying that he risked 
his life for the love of the Pope and the salvation of the 
people. The reader can almost hear the suppressed quiver 
of excitement " not without fear " in his voice. And then 
the rules of the Buono Stato were read. They were very 
simple but very thorough. The first was that whoever mur- 
dered a man should die for it, without any exception. The 
second that every case heard before the judges should be 
concluded within fifteen days ; the third that no house should 
be destroyed for any reason, except by order of the authori- 
ties. The fourth that every rione or district of the city 
should have its force of defenders, twenty-four horsemen 
and a hundred on foot, paid by and under the order of the 
State. Further, that a ship should be kept for the special 



ii.] THE DELIVERER. 427 

protection of the merchants on the coast ; that taxes were 
necessary and should be spent by the officers of the Buono 
Stato ; that the bridges, castles, gates and fortresses should 
be held by no man except the rector of the people, and 
should never be allowed to pass into the hands of a baron : 
that the barons should be set to secure the safety of the 
roads to Rome and should not protect robbers, under a pen- 
alty of a thousand marks of silver : — that the Commune 
should give help in money to the convents ; that each rione 
should have its granary and provide a reserve there for evil 
times ; that the kin of every man slain in battle in the cause 
of the Commune should have a recompense according to 
their degree: — that the ancient States subject to Rome 
should be restored ; and that whoever brought an accusation 
against a man which could not be proved should suffer the 
penalty belonging to the offence if it had been proved. This 
and various other regulations which pleased the people 
much were read, and passed unanimously by a show of hands 
and great rejoicing. " And it was also ordained that Cola 
should remain there as lord, but in conjunction with the 
Vicar of the Pope. And authority was given to him to 
punish, slay, pardon, to make laws and alliances, determine 
boundaries ; and full and free imperia, absolute power, was 
given him in everything that concerned the people of 
Rome." 

Thus was Cola's brag which so much amused the young 
lords made true over all their heads before many weeks were 
past. He had said that he would be a great lord, as power- 
ful as an emperor. And so he was. 













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THE LUNGARA. 

CHAPTER III. 

THE BUONO STATO. 

THE first incident in this new reign, so suddenly in- 
augurated, was a startling one. Stefano Colonna was 
the father of all the band — he of whom Petrarch speaks 
with such enthusiasm: " Dio immortale ! what majesty in 
his aspect, what a voice, what a look, what nobility in his 
air, what vigour of soul and body at that age of his ! I 
seemed to stand before Julius Caesar or Africanus, if not 
that he was older than either. Wonderful to say, this man 
never grows old, while Rome is older and older every day." 
He was absent from Pome, as has been said, on the occasion 
of the wonderful overthrow of all previous rule, and estab- 
lishment of the Buono Stato ; but as soon as he heard what 
had happened, he hastened back, with but few followers, 

428 



ch. in.] THE BUONO STATO. 429 

never doubting that he would soon make an end of that 
mountebank revolution. Early in the following morning 
he received from Cola a copy of the edict made on the 
Capitol and an order to leave Rome at once. Stefano took 
the paper and tore it in a thousand pieces. " If this fool 
makes me angry," he said, " I will fling him from the win- 
dows of the Capitol." When this was reported to Cola, he 
caused the bell of the Capitol to be sounded a stuormo, and 
the people rushed from all quarters to the call. Everything 
went rapidly at this moment of fate, and even the brave 
Colonna seems to have changed his mind in the twinkling 
of an eye. The aspect of affairs was so threatening that 
Stefano took the better part of valour and rode off at once 
with a single attendant, stopping only at San Lorenzo to 
eat, and pushing on to Palestrina, which was his chief seat 
and possession. Cola took instant advantage of this occur- 
rence : with the sanction of the excited people, he sent a 
similar order to that which Stefano had received, to all the 
other barons, ordering them to leave the city. Strange to 
say the order of the popular leader was at once obeyed. 
Perhaps no one ventured to stand after the head of the 
Roman chivalry had fled. These gallant cavaliers yielded 
to the Pazzo, the madman, with whom the head of the 
Colonnas had expected to make such short work, without 
striking a blow, in a panic sudden and complete. Next day 
all the bridges were given up and officials of the people set 
over them. " One was served in one way, another in an- 
other — these were banished and those had their heads cut 
off without mercy. The wicked were all judged cruelly." 
Afterwards another Parlamento was held on the Capitol, 
and all that had been done approved and confirmed — and 
the people with one voice declared Cola, and with him the 
Pope's Vicar, who had a share in all these wonderful pro- 
ceedings, Tribunes of the People and Liberators. 

There would seem after this alarmed dispersion of the 



430 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

nobles to have been some attempt on their part to regain 
the upper hand, which failed as they could not agree among 
themselves : upon which they received another call from 
Cola to appear in the Capitol and swear to uphold the 
Buono Stato. One by one the alarmed nobles came in. 
The first was Stefanello Colonna, the son of the old man, the 
first of his children after the two ecclesiastics, and heir of 
his influence and lands. Then came Ranello degli Orsini, 
then Janni Colonna, he who had invited Cola to dinner and 
laughed loud and long with his comrades over the buffoon- 
ery of the orator. What Cola said was no longer a merry 
jest. Then came Giordano of the same name, then Messer 
Stefano himself, the fine old man, the magnanimous — be- 
wildered by his own unexpected submission yet perhaps 
touched with some sense of the justice there was in it, 
swearing upon the Evangels to be faithful to the Commune, 
and to busy himself with his own share of the work: how 
to clear the roads, and turn away the robbers, to protect the 
orphans and the poor. The nobles gazed around them at the 
gathering crowd; they were daunted by all they saw, and 
one by one they took the oaths. One of the last was Fran- 
cesco Savelli, who was the proper lord of Cola di Eienzo, 
his master — yet took the oath of allegiance to him, his 
own retainer. It was such a wonder as had never been 
seen. But everything was wonderful — the determination 
of the people, the Pope's Vicar by the side of that mad 
Tribune, the authority in Cola's eyes, and in his eloquent 
voice. 

There must, however, have been a strong sense of the 
theatrical in the man. As he had at first appealed to the 
people by visible allegories, by pictures and similitudes, he 
kept up their interest now by continual spectacles. He 
studied his dress, as we have already seen, on all occasions, 
always aiming at something which would strike the eye. 
His robe of office was " of a fiery colour as if it had been 



in.] THE BUONO STATO. 431 

scarlet." "His face and his aspect were terrible." He 
showed mercy to no criminal, but exercised freely his privi- 
lege of life and death without respect of persons. A monk 
of San Anastasio, who was a person of infamous conduct, 
was beheaded like any other offender ; and a still greater, 
Martino di Porto, head of one of the great houses, met the 
same fate. Sometimes, his biographers allow, Cola was 
cruel. He would seem to have been a man of nervous cour- 
age " not without fear " ; very keenly alive to the risk he 
was running and not incapable, as was afterwards proved, 
of a sudden panic, as quickly roused as his flash of excessive 
valour. In one mood he was pushed by the passion of the 
absolute to rash proceedings, sudden vengeance, which suited 
well enough with the instincts of his followers ; in another 
his courage was apt to sink and his composure to fail at the 
first frown of fortune. The beginning of his career is like 
that of a man inspired — what he determined on was car- 
ried out as if by magic. He seemed to have only to ordain 
and it was accomplished. Within a very short time the 
courts of law, the markets, the public life in Rome were all 
transformed. The barons, unwilling as they were, must 
have done their appointed work, for the roads all at once 
became safe, and the disused processes of lawful life were 
resumed. "The woods rejoiced, for there were no longer 
robbers in them. The oxen began to plough. The pilgrims 
began again to make their circuits to the Sanctuaries, the 
merchants to come and go, to pursue their business. Fear 
and terror fell on the tyrants, and all good people, as freed 
from bondage, were full of joy." The bravos, the highway- 
men, all the ill-doers who had kept the city and its environs 
in terror fled in their turn, finding no protectors, nor any 
shelter that could save them from the prompt and ready 
sword of justice. Kefinements even of theoretical benevo- 
lence were in Cola's courts of law. There were Peacemakers 
to hear the pleas of men injured by their neighbours and 



432 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME [chap. 

bring them, if possible, into accord. Here is one very curi- 
ous scene : the law of compensations, by which an injury 
done should be repaid in kind, being in full force. 

"It happened that one man had blinded the eye of another; the 
prosecutors came and their case was tried on the steps of the Capitol. 
The culprit was kneeling there, weeping, and praying God to forgive 
him when the injured person came forward. The malefactor then 
raised his face that his eye might be blinded, if so it was ordained. 
But the other was moved with pity, and would not touch his eye, but 
forgave him the injury." 

No doubt the ancient doctrine of an eye for an eye, has 
in all times been thus tempered with mercy. 

It would appear that Cola now lived in the Capitol as his 
palace ; and he gradually began to surround himself with 
all the insignia of rank. This was part of his plan from 
the beginning, for, as has been said, he lost no opportunity 
of an effective appearance, either from a natural inclination 
that way, or from a wise appreciation of the tastes of the 
crowd, which he had such perfect acquaintance with. But 
there was nothing histrionic in the immediate results of his 
new reign. That he should have styled himself in all his 
public documents, letters and laws, "Nicholas, severe and 
clement, Tribune of peace, freedom, and justice, illustrious 
Liberator of the holy Eoman Republic," may have too 
much resembled the braggadocio which is so displeasing 
to our colder temperaments ; but Cola was no Englishman, 
neither was he of the nineteenth century : and there was 
something large and harmonious, a swing of words such as 
the Italian loves, a combination of the Brutus and the 
Christian, in the conjunction of these qualities which rec- 
ommends itself to the imaginative ear. But however his 
scarlet robes and his inflated self-description may be ob- 
jected to, nothing could mar the greatness of the moral 
revolution he effected in a city restored to peace and all 
the innocent habits of life, and a country tranquillised and 
made safe, where men came and went unmolested. Six 



in.] THE BUONO STATO. 433 

years before, as we have noted, Petrarch, the hero of the 
moment, was stopped by robbers just outside the walls of 
Rome, and had to fly back to the city to get an armed 
escort before he could pursue his way. "The shepherd 
armed," he says, "watches his sheep, afraid of robbers 
more than of wolves ; the ploughman wears a shirt of mail 
and goads his oxen with a lance. There is no safety, no 
peace, no humanity among the inhabitants, but only war, 
hate, and the work of devils." 

Such was the condition of affairs when Cola came to 
power. In a month or two after that sudden overturn his 
messengers, unarmed, clothed, some say, in white with the 
scarcella at their girdle embroidered with the arms of 
Rome, and bearing for all defence a white wand, travelled 
freely by all the roads from Rome, unmolested, received 
everywhere with joy. "I have carried this wand," says 
one of them, " over all the country and through the forests. 
Thousands have knelt before it and kissed it with tears of 
joy for the safety of the roads and the banishment of the 
robbers." The effect is still as picturesque as eye of artist 
could desire ; the white figures with their wands of peace 
traversing everywhere those long levels of the Campagna, 
where every knot of brushwood, all the coverts of the 
maccliia and every fortification by the way, had swarmed 
with robber bands — unharmed, unafraid, like angels of 
safety in the perturbed country. But it was none the less 
real, an immense and extraordinary revolution. The Buono 
Stato was proclaimed on the day of Pentecost, "Whit Sun- 
day, May 20th, 1347 : and in the month of June following, 
Cola was able to inform the world — that is to say, all 
Italy and the Pope and the Emperor — that the roads were 
safe and everything going well. Clement VI. received this 
report at Avignon and replied to it, giving his sanction to 
what had been done, "seeing that the new constitution 
had been established without violence or bloodshed," and 
2p 



434 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

confirming the authority of Cola and of his bishop and 
co-tribune, in letters dated the 27th of June. 

Nor was the change within the city less great. The 
dues levied by their previous holders on every bridge, on 
all merchandise and every passer-by, were either turned 
into a modest octroi, or abolished altogether ; every man's 
goods were safe in his house ; the women were free to go 
about their various occupations, the wife safe in the soli- 
tude of her home, in her husband's absence at his work, 
the girls at their sewing — in itself a revolution past count- 
ing. Kome began to breathe again and realise that her 
evil times were over, and that the Buono Stato meant com- 
fort as well as justice. The new Tribune made glorious 
sights, too, for all bystanders in these June days. He rode 
to Church, for example, in state on the feast of Santo Janni 
di Jugnio, St. John the Baptist, the great Midsummer festa, 
a splendid sight to behold. 

" The first to come was a militia of armed men on horseback, well 
dressed and adorned, to make way before the Prsefect. Then followed 
the officials, judges, notaries, peacemakers, syndics, and others ; fol- 
lowed by the four marshals with their mounted escort. Then came 
Janni d'AUo carrying the cup of silver gilt in which was the offering, 
after the fashion of the Senators : who was followed by more soldiers 
on horseback and the trumpeters, sounding their silver trumpets, the 
silver mouths making an honest and magnificent sound. Then came 
the public criers. All these passed in silence. After came one man 
alone, bearing a naked sword in sign of justice. Baccio, the son of 
Jubileo, was he. Then followed a man scattering money on each side 
all along the way, according to the custom of the Emperors : Liello 
Magliari was his name — he was accompanied by two persons carry- 
ing a sack of money. After this came the Tribune, alone. He rode 
on a great charger, dressed in silk, that is velvet, half green and half 
yellow, furred with minever. In his right hand he carried a wand 
of steel, polished and shining, surmounted by an apple of silver gilt, 
and above the apple a cross of gold in which was a fragment of the 
Holy Cross. On one side of this were letters in enamel, 'Deus,' and 
on the other ' Spiritus Sanctus.' Immediately after him came Cecco 
di Alasso, carrying a banner after the mode of kings. The standard 
was white with a sun of gold set round with silver stars on a field of 
blue : and it was surmounted by a white dove, bearing in its beak a 
crown of olive. On the right and left came fifty vassals of Vetorchiano 
on foot with clubs in their hands, like bears clothed and armed. Then 



in.] THE BUONO STATO. 435 

followed a crowd of people unarmed, the rich and the powerful, coun- 
sellors, and many honest people. With such triumph and glory came 
he to the bridge of San Pietro, where every one saluted, the gates were 
thrown wide, and the road left spacious and free. When he had reached 
the steps of San Pietro all the clergy came forth to meet him in their 
vestments and ornaments. With white robes, with crosses and with 
great order, they came chanting Veni Creator Spiritus, and so received 
him with much joy." 

This is how Cola rode from the Capitol to St. Peter's, 
traversing almost the whole of the existing city : his offer- 
ing borne before him after the manner of the Senators : 
money scattered among the people after the manner of 
the Emperors : his banner carried as before kings : united 
every great rank in one. Panem et circenses were all the 
old Roman populace had cared for. He gave them peace 
and safety and beautiful processions and allegories to their 
hearts' content. There were not signs wanting for those 
who divined them afterwards, that with all this triumph 
and glory the Tribune began a little to lose his self-restraint. 
He began to make feasts and great entertainments at the 
Capitol. The palaces of the forfeited nobles were emptied 
of their beautiful tapestries, and hangings, and furniture, 
to make the long disused rooms there splendid ; and the 
nobles were fined a hundred florins each for repairs to this 
half-royal, half-ruinous abode, making it glorious once more. 

But in the meantime everything went well. One of the 
Colonnas, Pietro of Agapito 1 — who ought to have been 
Senator for the year — was taken and sent to prison, whether 
for that offence merely or some other we are not told ; while 
the rest of the house, with old Stefano at their head, kept a 
stormy quiet at Palestrina, saying nothing as yet. Answers 
to Cola's letters came from all the states around, in congrat- 
ulation and friendship, the Pope himself, as we have seen, 
at the head of all. " All Italy was roused," says Petrarch. 
" The terror of the Roman name extended even to countries 

1 A necessary distinction when there were so many of the same 
name — i.e., Pietro the son of Agapito, nephew of old Stefano. 



436 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

far away. I was then in France and I know what was ex- 
pressed in the words and on the faces of the most important 
personages there. Now that the needle has ceased to prick, 
they may deny it ; but then all were full of alarm, so great 
still was the name of Rome. No one could tell how soon a 
movement so remarkable, taking place in the first city of 
the world, might penetrate into other places." The Sol clan 
of Babylon himself, that great potentate, hearing that a man 
of great justice had arisen in Borne, called aloud upon Ma- 
homet and Saint Elimason (whoever that might be) to help 
Jerusalem, meaning Saracinia, our chronicler tells us. Thus 
the sensation produced by Cola's revolution ran through the 
world : and if after a while his mind lost something of its 
balance, it is scarcely to be wondered at when we read the 
long and flattering letters, some of which have been pre- 
served, which Betrarch talks of writing to him " every day " : 
and in which he is proclaimed greater than Bomulus, whose 
city was small and surrounded with stakes only, while that 
of Cola was great and defended by invincible walls : and than 
Brutus who withstood one tyrant only, while Cola overthrew 
many : and than Camillus, who repaired ruins still smoking 
and recent, while Cola restored those which were ancient 
and inveterate almost beyond hope. Bor one wonderful 
moment both friends and foes seem to have believed that 
Borne had at one step recovered the empire of the world. 

Cola had thus triumphed everywhere by peaceful methods, 
but he had yet to prove what he could do in arms ; and the 
opportunity soon occurred. The only one of the nobles 
who had not yielded at least a pretence of submission was 
Giovanni di Vico, of the family of the Gaetani, who had 
held the office of Brsefect of Borne, and was Lord of Viterbo. 
Against him the Tribune sent an expedition under one of 
the Orsini, which defeated and crushed the rebel, who, on 
hearing that Cola himself was coming to join his forces, 
gave himself up and was brought into Borne to make his 



in.] THE BUONO STATO. 437 

submission : so that in this way also the triumph of the 
popular leader was complete. All the surrounding castles 
fell into his hands, Civita Vecchia on one hand and Viterbo 
on the other; and he employed a captain of one family 
against the rebels of another with such skill and force that 
all were kept within control. 

Up to the end of July this state of affairs continued un- 
broken ; success on every side, and apparently a new hope 
for Italy, possibly deliverance for the world. The Tribune 
seemed safe as any monarch on his seat, and still bore him- 
self with something of the simplicity and steadfastness of 
his beginning. But this began to modify by degrees. Espe- 
cially after his easy victory over Giovanni di Vico, he seems 
to have treated the nobles whom he had crushed under his 
heel with contemptuous incivility, which is the less wonder- 
ful when we see how Petrarch, courtly as he was, speaks of 
the same class, acknowledging even his beloved Colonnas 
to be unworthy of the Roman name. The Tribune sat in 
his chair of state, while the barons were required to stand 
in his presence, with their arms folded on their breasts and 
their heads uncovered. His wife, who was beautiful and 
young, was escorted by a guard of honour wherever she 
went and attended by the noblest ladies of Rome. The old 
palace of the Campidoglio was gay with feasts ; its dilapi- 
dated walls were adorned with the rich hangings taken from 
the confiscated houses of the potenti. And then the Trib- 
une's poor relations began to be separated from the crowd, 
to ride about on fine horses and dwell in fine houses. And 
the sights and spectacles provided for the people, as well as 
the steps taken by Cola himself to enhance his dignity and 
to occupy the attention of everybody around, began to as- 
sume a fantastic character. An uneasy vainglory, a desire 
to be always executing some feat or developing some new 
pretension, a restless strain after the histrionic and dra- 
matic began to show themselves in him — as if he felt that 



438 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

his tenure somehow demanded a continued supply of such 
amusements for the people, who rushed to gaze and admire 
whatever he did, and filled the air with vivas: yet began 
secretly in their hearts, as Lo Popolo always does, to com- 
ment upon the extravagance of the Tribune, and the elevation 
over their heads of Janni the barber, for instance, who now 
rode about so grandly with a train of attendants, as if, in- 
stead of being popolo like themselves, he were one of the 
potenti whom his nephew Cola had cast down from their 
seats. 

One of the first great acts which denotes this trembling 
of sound reason in the Tribune's soul was the fantastic 
ceremony by which he made himself a knight, to the won- 
der of all Rome. It was not, all the historians tell us, a 
strange or unheard-of thing that the City should create 
cavalieri of its own. Florence had done it, and Rome also 
had done it — in the case of Stefano Colonna and some 
others very shortly before — but with at least the pretence 
of an honour conferred by the people on citizens selected 
by their fellow-citizens. Nothing of the kind was possible 
with Cola di Rienzi, and no illusion was attempted on the 
subject. He was supreme in all things, and it pleased him 
to take this dignity to himself. No doubt there was an 
ambitious purpose hidden under the external ceremony, 
which from the outside looked so much like a dramatic 
interlude to amuse the people, and a satisfaction of vanity 
on his own part. Both these things no doubt had their 
share, but they were not all. He made extraordinary prep- 
arations for the success and eclat, of what was in reality 
a coup d'etat of the most extraordinary kind. First of all 
he fortified himself by the verdict of all the learned law- 
yers in Rome, to whom he submitted the question whether 
the Roman people had the right to resume into their own 
hands, and exercise, the authority which had been used by 
tyrants in the name of the city — a question to which there 



in.] THE BUONO STATO. 439 

could be but one answer, by acclamation. These rights had 
always been claimed as absolute and supreme by whatsoever 
leaders the people of Rome had permitted to speak for them, 
or whom, more truly, they had followed like sheep. Twenty 
years before, as we have seen, they had been by way of 
conferring the crown of the Empire upon Louis of Bavaria. 
It was a pretension usually crushed in its birth as even II 
Bavaro did by receiving the same crown a second time from 
his anti-Pope ; but it was one which had been obstinately 
held, especially in the disorderly ranks of Lo Popolo, and 
by visionaries of all kinds. The Popes had taken that con- 
trol out of the hands of Pome and claimed it for the Church 
with such success as we have attempted to trace ; but that 
in one form or another the reigning city of the world had 
always a right to this supremacy was held by all. In both 
cases it had been in a great degree a visionary and unreal 
claim, never practically accepted by the world, and the 
cause of endless futile struggles to overcome might with 
(hypothetical) right. 

Cola however, as we have seen, had as high a conception 
of those claims of Pome as Gregory had, or Innocent. He 
believed that in its own right the old Imperial race — which 
was as little Imperial by this time, as little assured in de- 
scent and as devoid of all royal qualities as any tribe of 
barbarians — retained still the sway over the world which 
had been enforced by the Imperial legions under the great- 
est generals in the world. The enthusiasts for this theory 
have been able to shut their eyes to all the laws of nature 
and government, and with the strangest superstition have 
clung to the ghost of what was real only by stress of supe- 
rior power and force, when all force had departed out of the 
hands which were but as painted shadows of the past. It 
is strange to conceive by what possible reasoning a conflict- 
ing host of mediaeval barons of the most mixed blood, this 
from the Rhine, that from the south of Italy, as Petrarch 



440 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

describes on more than one occasion, of no trne patri- 
cian stock : and the remains of a constantly subject and 
enslaved people, never of any account except in moments 
of revolution — could be made to occupy the place in the 
world which Imperial Borne, the only conqueror, the sole 
autocrat of the world, had held. The Popes had another 
and more feasible claim. They were the heads of a spirit- 
ual Empire, standing by right of their office between God 
and the world, with a right (as they believed) to arbitrate 
and to ordain, as representatives of heaven; a perfectly 
legitimate right, if allowed by those subject to it, or proved 
by sufficient evidence. Cola, with a curious twist of intel- 
ligence and meaning, attempted to combine both claims. 
He was the messenger of the Holy Ghost as well as the 
Tribune of the City. Only by the immediate action of God, 
as he held, could such a sudden and complete revolution as 
that which had put the power into his hands have been 
accomplished: therefore he was appointed by God. But 
he was also the representative of the people, entrusted by 
Eome with complete power. The spheres of these two 
sublime influences were confused. Sometimes he acted as 
inspired by one, sometimes asserted himself as the imper- 
sonation of the other. Knight of the Holy Ghost, he was 
invested with the white robes of supernatural purity and 
right — Tribune of Eome, he held the mandate of the peo- 
ple and wielded the power which was its birthright. This 
was the dazzling, bewildering position and supremacy which 
he was now to claim before the world. 

He had invited all the States of Italy to send deputations 
of their citizens to Eome, and the invitation had been 
largely accepted. From Florence, Sienna, Perugia, and many 
other lesser cities, the representatives of the people came to 
swell his train. The kings of France and England made 
answer by letter in tones of amity ; from Germany Louis of 
Bavaria hailed the Tribune in friendly terms, requesting his 



in.] THE BUONO STATO. 441 

intercession with the Pope. The Venetians, and " Messer 
Lnchino il granne tyranno de Milano " also sent letters ; 
and ambassadors came from Sicily and from Hungary, both 
claiming the help of Rome. Everything was joy and tri- 
umph in the city. It was the 1st of August — a great festi- 
val, the day of the Feriae Augusti — Eeragosto, according to 
the Roman patois — among the populace which no longer 
knew what that meant ; but Cola, who was better instructed, 
had chosen it because of its significance. He rode to the 
Lateran in the afternoon in great splendour. It was in the 
Church's calendar the vigil of San Pietro in Vincoli, the anni- 
versary of the chains of the Apostle, which the Empress 
Eudoxia had brought with great solemnity to Rome. " All 
Rome," says the chronicler, "men and women rushed to 
St. John Lateran, taking places under the portico to see the 
festa, and crowding the streets to behold this triumph. 

" Then came many cavaliers of all nations, barons and people, and 
Foresi with breastplates of bells, clothed in samite, and with banners ; 
they made great festivity, and there were games and rejoicings, jug- 
glers and buffoons without end. There sounded the trumpets, here 
the bagpipes, and the cannon was fired. Then, accompanied with 
music, came the wife of Cola on foot with her mother, and attended 
by many ladies. Behind the ladies came young men finely dressed, 
carrying the bridle of a horse gilt and ornamented. There were silver 
trumpets without number, and you could see the trumpeters blow. 
Afterwards came a multitude of horsemen, the first of whom were 
from Perugia and Corneto. Twice they threw off their silver robes. 1 
Then came the Tribune with the Pope's Vicar by his side. Before the 
Tribune was seen one who carried a naked sword, another carried a 
banner over his head. In his own hand he bore a steel wand. Many 
and many nobles were with him. He was clothed in a long white 
robe, worked with gold thread. Between day and night he came out 
into the Chapel of Pope Benedict to the loggia and spoke to the 
people, saying, ' You know that this night I am to be made knight. 
When you come back you shall hear things which will be pleasing to 
God in heaven and to men on earth.' He spoke in such a way that 
in so great a multitude there was nothing but gladness, neither horror 
nor arms. Two men quarrelled and drew their swords, but were soon 
persuaded to return them to their scabbards. . . . When all had gone 
away the clergy celebrated a solemn service, and the Tribune entered 

1 Changed their dresses, throwing those which they took off among 
the people. 



442 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

into the Baptistery and bathed himself in the shell 1 of the Emperor 
Constantine which was of precious porphyry. Marvellous is this to 
say ; and much was it talked of among the people. Then he slept 
upon a venerable bed, lying in that place called San Giovanni in Fonte 
within the circuit of the columns. There he passed the night, which 
was a great wonder. The bed and bedding were new, and as the 
Tribune got up from it some part of it fell to the ground in the silence 
of the night. In the morning he clothed himself in scarlet ; the sword 
was girt upon him by Messer Vico degli Scotti, and the gold spurs of 
a knight. All Rome, and every knight among them, had come back 
to San Giovanni, also all the barons and strangers, to behold Messer 
Cola di Rienzi as a knight." 

The chronicle goes on to tell us after this, how Cola went 
forth upon the loggia of Pope Benedict's Chapel, while a 
solemn mass was being performed, and addressed the people. 

" And with a great voice he cited, first, ' Messer Papa Chimente ' to 
return to his See in Rome, and afterwards cited the College of the 
Cardinals. Then he cited the Bavarian. Then he cited the electors 
of the Empire in Germany saying, ' I would see what right they have 
to elect,' for it was written that after a certain time had elapsed the 
election fell to the Romans. When this citation was made, imme- 
diately there appeared letters and couriers to carry them, who were 
sent at once on their way. Then he took the sword and drew it from 
its scabbard, and waved it to the three quarters of the world saying, 
' This is mine ; and this is mine ; and this is mine.' The Vicar of the 
Pope was present, who stood like a dumb man and an idiot stupefied 
by this new thing. He had his notary with him, who protested and 
said that these things were not done by his consent, and that he had 
neither any knowledge of them, nor sanction from the Pope. And he 
prayed the notary to draw out his protest publicly. "While the notary 
made this protest crying out with a loud voice, Messer Cola com- 
manded the trumpets and all the other instruments to play, that the 
voice of the notary might not be heard, the greater noise swallowing 
up the lesser." 

These were the news which Cola had promised to let the 
crowd know when they returned — -news pleasing to God 
and to men. But there were no doubt many searchings of 
heart in the great crowd that filled the square of the Lat- 
eran, straining to hear his voice, as he claimed the dominion 
of the world, and called upon Pope and Emperor to appear 
before him. ISTo wonder if the Pope's Vicar was " stupefied " 

1 The bath, or baptismal vase of Constantine (so-called) here re- 
ferred to, still stands in the Baptistery of the Lateran. 



in.] THE BUONO STATO. 443 

and would take no part in these strange proceedings. It was 
probably the Notary of the Commune and not Cola himself 
who published the citations, and the authority for them, set 
forth at length, which were enough to blanch the cheeks of 
any Vicar of the Pope. 

"In the sanctuary, that is the Baptistery, of the holy prince Con- 
stantine of glorious memory, we have received the bath of chivalry ; 
under the conduct of the Holy Spirit, whose unworthy servant and 
soldier we are, and for the glory of the Holy Church our mother, and 
our lord the Pope, and also for the happiness and advantage of the 
holy city of Rome, of holy Italy and of all Christendom, we, knight 
of the Holy Spirit, and as such clothed in white, Nicolas, severe and 
clement, liberator of the city, defender of Italy, friend of mankind, and 
august Tribune, we who wish and desire that the gift of the Holy Ghost 
should be received and should increase throughout Italy, and intend, 
as God enables us, to imitate the bounty and generosity of ancient 
princes, we make known : that when we accepted the dignity of 
Tribune the Roman people, according to the opinions of all the judges, 
lawyers, and learned authorities, recognised that they possessed still 
the same authority, power and jurisdiction over all the earth which 
belonged to them in primitive times, and at the period of their greatest 
splendour : and they have revoked formally all the privileges accorded 
to others against that same authority, power, and jurisdiction. There- 
fore in conformity with those ancient rights and the unlimited power 
which has been conferred upon us by the people in a general assembly, 
and also by our lord the Pope, as is proved by his bulls apostolical : 
and that we may not be ungrateful to the grace and gift of the Holy 
Spirit, or avaricious of this same grace and gift in respect to the 
Roman people and the peoples of Italy above mentioned : in order 
also that the rights and jurisdiction of the Roman people may not be 
lost : we resolve and announce, in virtue of the power and grace of 
the Holy Spirit, and in the form most feasible and just, that the holy 
city of Rome is the head of the world and the foundation of Christian 
faith : and we declare that all the cities of Italy are free, and we 
accord and have accorded to these cities an entire freedom, and from 
to-day constitute them Roman citizens, declaring, announcing, and 
ordaining that henceforward they should enjoy the privileges of 
Roman freedom. 

" In addition, and in virtue of the same puissance and grace of God, 
of the Holy Spirit, and of the Roman people, we assert, recognise and 
declare that the choice of the Roman Emperor, the jurisdiction and 
dominion over all the holy empire, belongs to the Holy City itself, 
and to holy Italy by several causes and reasons ; and we make known 
by this decree to all prelates, elected emperors, and electors, to the 
kings, dukes, princes, counts, and margraves, to the people, to the 
corporations, and to all others who contradict this and exercise any 
supposed right in respect to the choice of the empire, that they are 
called to appear to explain their pretensions in the Church of the 



444: THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

Lateran, before us and the other commissioners of our lord the Pope be- 
tween this and Pentecost of next year, and that after that time we shall 
proceed according to our rights and the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. ' ' 

The instrument is very long drawn out and entangled in 
its sentences, but the claim set forth in it is very clear, and 
arrogant as that of any Forged Decretals or Papal Bull. 
Its tone makes every pretension of the Popes sound humble, 
and every assertion of their power reasonable. But there 
is no reason to doubt that it was perfectly sincere. Borne 
was a word which went to the heads of every one connected 
with that wonderful city. Nothing was too great for her ; 
no exaltation too high. To transfer the election of the 
Emperor from the great German princes to the populace of 
Borne, fickle and ignorant, led by whoever came uppermost, 
was a fantastic imagination, which it is almost impossible 
to believe any sane man could entertain. Yet Cola thought 
it just and true, the only thing to be done in order to turn 
earth into a sort of heaven ; and Petrarch, a more prudent 
man, thought the same. To the poet Cola's enterprise was 
the hope of Italy and of the world : and it was at this mo- 
ment, when the Tribune was in the full flush of his triumph, 
that Petrarch addressed to him, besides a promise of a poem 
supposed to be fulfilled in the Spirto Gentil, a long letter, 
Esortatoria, in which he exhorts him to pursue the " happy 
success" of his "most glorious undertaking," by sobriety 
and modesty it is true, but also by gladness and triumph, in 
order that the city " chosen by all the world as the seat ■ of 
empire," should not relapse into slavery. " Borne, queen of 
cities, lady of the world, head of the empire, seat of the 
great Pontiff," her claim to dominion was not doubted by 
those strange enthusiasts. She was an abstraction, an ideal 
wisdom and power personified — not even in a race, not in a 
great man or men, but in the city, and that ever wavering 
tumultuous voice of the populace, blown hither and thither 
by every wind. And Cola believed himself to hold in his 



in.] THE BUONO STATO. 445 

hands the fortunes and interests of Christendom entire, the 
dominion of the whole world. No enthusiasm, no delu- 
sion, could be more extraordinary. 

The ceremonies of August did not finish with this. An- 
other prodigious ceremonial was celebrated on the day of 
the Assumption of the Virgin, the fifteenth of that month, 
also a great Roman holiday. On this day there was once 
more a great function in the Church of the Lateran. The 
Pope's Vicar refused to preside, awaiting in the meantime 
orders from headquarters. But this did not arrest these 
curious proceedings. This time it was the coronation of 
the Tribune that was in question. He had made himself 
a knight, and even had invented an order for himself, the 
order of those " Clothed in White," the Knights of the 
Holy Spirit. Now he was to be crowned according to his 
fashion. The chronicler of the life of Cola, however, takes 
no notice of this ceremony. It was begun by the Prior of 
St. John Lateran, who advanced to the Tribune and gave 
him a crown of oak-leaves, with the words, "Take this 
oaken crown because thou hast delivered the citizens from 
death." After him came the Prior of St. Peter's with a 
crown of ivy, saying, "Take this ivy because thou hast 
loved religion." The Dean of St. Paul's came next with 
a crown of myrtle, " Because thou hast done thy duty and 
preserved justice, and hast hated bribes." The Prior of 
St. Lorenzo brought a crown of laurel, he of Sta. Maria 
Maggiore one of olive, with the not very suitable address, 
" Take this, man of humble mind, because in thee humility 
has overcome pride." Finally the Prior of the hospital of 
Santo Spirito presented Cola with a silver crown and a 
sceptre, saying, "Illustrious Tribune, receive this crown 
and sceptre, the gifts of the Holy Ghost, along with the 
spiritual crown." This, one would suppose, must have been 
an interpolation ; for Goffredo degli Scotti, who had belted 
on his sword as a knight, was present with another silver 



446 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

crown, given by the people of Rome, which was surmounted 
by a cross, and which was presented to Cola with the words: 
" Illustrious Tribune, receive this : exercise justice, and give 
us freedom and peace." 

The reader will be tempted to imagine that Cola must 
have been weighed down by this pyramid of wreaths, like a 
French schoolboy in his moment of triumph. But in the 
midst of all these glorious surroundings his dramatic imagi- 
nation had conceived a telling way of getting rid of them. 
By his side stood a man very poorly dressed and carrying 
a sword, with which he took off in succession every crown 
as it was placed upon the Tribune's head, " in sign of humil- 
ity and because the Boman Emperors had to endure every 
incivility addressed to them in the day of their triumph." 
We find, however, the beggar man with all the crowns 
spitted upon his sword, a ridiculous rather than an expres- 
sive figure. The last of all, the silver crown, remained on 
the Tribune's brows, the Archbishop of Naples having the 
courtly inspiration of interposing when the ragged attend- 
ant would have taken it. All the different wreaths had 
classical or Scriptural meanings. They were made from 
the plants that grew wild about the Arch of Constantine ; 
everything was symbolical, mystic — the seven gifts of the 
Spirit; and all pervaded by that fantastic mixture of the 
old and the new, of which the world was then full. 

After this final assertion of his greatness Cola made a 
speech to the people confirming the assertions and high- 
flown pretensions of his former proclamation, and forbid- 
ding any emperor, king, or prince whatsoever, to touch the 
sacred soil of Italy without the consent of the Pope and 
the Boman people. He seems to have concluded by for- 
bidding the use of the names of Guelf and Ghibelline — 
an admirable rule could it have been carried out. 

While all Borne was thus swarming in the streets, filling 
up every available inch of space under the porticoes and in 



in.] THE BUONO STATO. 447 

the square to see this great sight, a certain holy monk, much 
esteemed by the people, was found weeping and praying in 
one of the chapels of Sta. Maria Maggiore, while the Tribune 
in all his state was receiving crowns and homage. One of 
Cola's domestic priests, who officiated in the private chapel 
at the Capitol, asked Fra G-uglielmo why in the midst of so 
much rejoicing he alone was sorrowful. " Thy master," 
said the monk, " has fallen from heaven to-day ! Oh that 
such pride should have entered into his soul ! With the 
help of the Holy Spirit he has driven the tyrants out of 
Rorae without striking a blow, he has been raised to the 
dignity of a Tribune, and all the towns and all the lords of 
Italy have done him honour. Why is he so proud and so 
ungrateful towards the Most High, and why does he dare in 
an insolent address to compare himself to his Creator ? Say 
to thy master that nothing will expiate such a crime but 
tears of penitence." Thus it will be seen that there were 
checks, very soon apparent, to the full flood of enthusiasm 
and faith with which the Tribune had been received. 

Meanwhile there remained, outside of all these triumphs 
and rejoicings and the immense self-assertion of the man 
who in the name of Eome claimed a sort of universal do- 
minion — a strong band of nobles still in possession of 
their castles and strongholds round the city, grimly watch- 
ing the progress of affairs, and no doubt waiting the 
moment when the upstart who thus had pranked himself in 
all the finery and the follies of royalty, should take that 
step too far which is always to be expected and which 
should decide his fate. No doubt to old Stefano Colonna, 
with all his knowledge of men, this end would seem com- 
ing on very surely when he heard of, or perhaps witnessed, 
the melodrama of the knighthood, the farce of the corona- 
tion. Cola had been forced to take advantage of the ser- 
vices of these barons, even though he hated them. He had 
put an Orsini at the head of his troops against the Praefect 



448 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

Giovanni di Vico. He appointed Janni Colonna, his former 
patron, who had laughed at him so heartily, to lead the 
expedition against the Gaetani. Nowhere, it would seem, 
among the men who were popolari, of the people, was the 
ghost of a general to be found. The nobles had been at 
first banished from Rome ; but their good behaviour in that 
great matter of the safety of the roads, or else the difficulty 
of acting against them individually, and the advice of 
Petrarch and others who advised great caution, had no 
doubt tacitly broken this sentence, and permitted their 
return. Many of them were certainly in Rome, going and 
coming, though none held any office ; and we are told that 
old Stefano was present at the great dinner after Cola made 
himself a knight. Perhaps comments were made upon 
those ceremonies which reached the ears of the Tribune ; 
perhaps there were whispers of growing impatience in the 
other party, or hints of plots among them. Or perhaps Cola, 
having exhausted all other methods of giving to himself and 
Rome a new sensation, bethought himself of these enemies 
of the Republic, always no doubt desirous of acting against 
her, whether they did so openly or not. His proceedings 
had now become so histrionic that it is permissible to sur- 
mise a motive which otherwise would have been unworthy 
a man of his genius and natural power ; and in face of the 
curious tragi-comedy which followed it is difficult not to 
suspect something of the kind. One day in September the 
Tribune invited a number of the nobles to a great dinner. 
The list given in the Vita includes the noblest names in 
Rome. Stefano Colonna with three of his sons — Agapito 
and "the prosperous youth" Janni (grandson) and Stefa- 
nello, the eldest lay member of the family, along with a 
number of the Orsini, Luca de Savelli, the Conte di Ver- 
tolle, and several others. The feast would seem to have 
begun with apparent cordiality and that strained politeness 
and watchfulness on the part of the guests, which has dis- 



in.] THE BUONO STATO. 449 

tinguislied many fatal banquets in which every man mis- 
trusted his neighbour. Cola had done nothing as yet to 
warrant any downright suspicion of treachery, but most 
likely the barons had an evil conscience, and it might have 
been observed that the Tribune's courtesy also was strained. 

"Towards evening the popolari who were among the guests began 
to talk of the defects of the nobles, and the goodness of the Tribune. 
Then Messer Stefano the elder began a question, which was best in a 
Ruler of the people, to be prodigal or economical ? A great discussion 
arose upon this, and at the last Messer Stefano took up a corner of 
Cola's robe, and said, ' To thee, Tribune, it would be more suitable to 
wear an honest costume of cloth, than this pompous habit,' and saying 
this he showed the corner of the robe. When Cola heard this he was 
troubled. He called for the guard and had them all arrested. Messer 
Stefano the veteran was placed in an adjoining hall, where he remained 
all night without any bed, pacing about the room, and knocking at the 
door prayed the guards to free him : but the guards would not listen 
to him. Then daylight appeared. The Tribune deliberated whether 
he should not cut off their heads, in order to liberate completely the 
people of Eome. He gave orders that the Parlatorio should be hung 
with red and white cloth, which was the signal of execution. Then 
the great bell was rung and the people gathered to the Capitol. He 
sent to each of the prisoners a confessor, one of the Minor friars, that 
they might rise up to repentance and receive the body of Christ. 
When the Barons became aware of all these preparations and heard 
the great bell ringing, they were so frozen with fear that they could 
not speak. Most of them humbled themselves and made their peni- 
tence, and received the communion. Messer Rainallo degli Orsini and 
some others, because they had in the morning eaten fresh figs, could 
not receive, and Messer Stefano Colonna would not confess, nor com- 
municate, saying that he was not ready, and had not set his affairs in 
order. 

"In the meanwhile, several of the citizens, considering the judgment 
that was about to be made, used many arguments to prevent it in 
soothing and peaceful words. At last the Tribune rose from the coun- 
cil and broke up the debate. It was now the hour of Tierce. The 
Barons as condemned persons came down sadly into the Parlatorio. 
The trumpets sounded as if for their execution, and they were ranged 
in face of the people. Then the Tribune changed his purpose, ascended 
the platform, and made a beautiful sermon. He repeated the Pater 
Noster, that part which says ' Forgive us our debts. ' Then he par- 
doned the Barons and said that he wished them to be in the service of 
the people, and made peace between them and the people. One by one 
they bowed their heads to the people. After this their offices were 
restored to them, and to each was given a beautiful robe trimmed with 
vair: and a new Gonfalon was made with wheatears in gold. Then 
he made them dine with him and afterwards rode through the city, 
leading them with him ; and then let them go freely on their way, 

26 



450 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

This that was done much displeased all discreet persons who said, 
' He has lighted a fire and flame which he will not be able to put 
out.' " 

" And I," adds the chronicler, " said this proverb," which 
was by no means a decorous one : its meaning was that it 
was useless to make a smell of gunpowder and shoot no one. 

The Tribune's dramatic instincts had gone too far. He 
had indeed produced a thrilling sensation, a moment of 
extreme and terrible tragic apprehension; but he forgot 
that he was playing with men, not puppets, and that the 
mercy thus accorded after they had been brought through 
the bitterness of death, was not likely to be received as 
a generous boon by these shamed and outraged patricians, 
who were as much insulted by his mercy as they we,re in- 
jured by his fictitious condemnation. They must have fol- 
lowed him in that ride through Rome with hearts burning 
within them, the furred mantles which were his gifts like 
badges of shame upon their shoulders : and each made his 
way, as soon as they were free, outside the gates to their 
own castles, with fury in their hearts. These men were not 
of the kind upon whom so tragic a jest could be played. 
Old Stefano and his sons, having suffered the further in- 
dignity of being created by that rascal multitude patricians 
and consuls, went off to their impregnable Palestrina, and 
the Orsini to Marino, an equally strong place. Hencefor- 
ward there was no peace possible between the Tribune and 
the nobles of Rome. " He drew back from the accom- 
plishment of his treachery," says his modern biographer 
Papencordt. Did he ever intend to do more than was 
done ? It seems to us very doubtful. He was a man 
of sensations, and loved a thrilling scene, which he cer- 
tainly secured. He humiliated his foes to the very dust, 
and made a situation at which all Rome held its breath : 
the tribunal draped as for a sentence of death, the confessor 
at every man's elbow, the populace solemnly assembled to 



in.] THE BUONO STATO. 451 

see the tyrants die, while all the while the robes with their 
border of royal minever were laid ready, and the banners 
worked with ears of wheat. There is a touch almost of 
the mountebank in those last details. Petrarch, it is 
curious to note, disapproved, not of the trap laid for the 
nobles, or the circumstances of the drama, but of the 
failure of Cola to take advantage of such an opportunity, 
" an occasion such as fortune never gave to an Emperor," 
when he might have cut off at a single blow the enemies of 
freedom. Perhaps the poet was right : but yet Cola in his 
folly would have been a worse man if he had been a wiser 
one. As it was his dramatic instinct was his ruin. 

The barons went off fra denti minacciavano, swearing- 
through their teeth, and it was not long before the Orsini, 
who had been, up to that tragic banquet, his friends and 
supporters, had entrenched themselves in Marino, and were 
in full rebellion, resuming all the ancient customs of their 
race, and ravaging the Campagna to the very gates of Rome. 
It was the time of the vintage, which for once it had seemed 
likely would be made in peace that first year of the republic, 
if never before. But already the spell of the short-lived 
peace was broken, and once more the raiders were abroad, 
carrying terror and loss to all the surrounding country. 
" So great was the folly of the Tribune," his primitive 
biographer resumes, losing patience, that instead of follow- 
ing the rebels at once to their lair, he gave them time to 
fortify Marino and set everything in order for defence, so 
that it proved a hard task when at last he bestirred him- 
self and went against the stronghold with an army of unu 
sual strength, chiefly raised among the irritated Romans 
themselves, with which he spoiled all the surrounding coun- 
try, took a smaller fortress belonging to the Orsini, and so 
alarmed them that they offered to surrender on condition 
of having their safety secured. Cola would make no con- 
ditions, but he did not succeed in taking Marino, being 



452 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

urgently called back to Rome to meet the Legate of the 
Pope, who had been sent to deal with him with the severest 
threats and reprimands. The Tribune upon this returned 
to the city, raising the siege of Marino ; and instantly on his 
arrival gave orders for the destruction of the palace of the 
Orsini, near the Castle of St. Angelo. He then went on to 
St. Peter's, where with his usual love of costume, and in 
the strange vanity which more and more took possession of 
him, he took from the treasury of the Chief of the Apos- 
tles the dalmatic usually worn by the Emperors during the 
ceremonies of their coronation, a garment of great price, 
" all embroidered," says the chronicler, " with small pearls." 
This he put on over his armour, and so equipped, and with 
the silver crown on his head which was his distinction as 
Tribune, and the glittering steel sceptre in his hand, went 
to the Papal palace, where the Legate awaited him. " Ter- 
rible and fantastic was his appearance," says his biographer ; 
and he was in no mood to receive the Legate as so high a 
functionary expected. " You have come to see us — what 
is your pleasure ? " he said. The Legate replied : " I have 
much to say to you from the Pope." When the Tribune 
heard these words, he spoke out loudly in a high voice, 
" What have you to say ? " but when the Legate heard 
this rampant reply, he stood astonished and was silent; 
then the Tribune turned his back upon him. 

Rampagnosa indeed was his air and manner, touched with 
that madness which the gods send to those whom they would 
destroy ; and fantastico the appearance of the leader, unac- 
customed to arms, with the Emperor's splendid mantle over 
the dust of the road, and the pacific simplicity of the little 
civic crown over his steel cap. Probably the stately Car- 
dinal-Legate, accustomed to princes and statesmen, thought 
the Tribune mad ; he must have been partially so at least, 
in the excitement of his first campaign, and the rising tide 
of his self-confidence, and the hurry and commotion of fate. 



in.] THE BUONO STATO. 453 

In the meantime, however, Marino was not taken, and 
another fire of rebellion had broken out among the Co- 
lonnas, who were now known to be making great prepara- 
tions for a descent upon Eome. The Legate had retired 
to Monte Fiascone, whence he opened a correspondence 
with both divisions of these rebel nobles; and a formid- 
able party was thus organised, from one point to another, 
against Eome : while the city itself began to send forth 
secret messengers on all sides, the populace changing its 
mind as usual, while the wealthy citizens were alarmed by 
their isolation, or offended by the arrogance of their chief. 
Cola, too, by this time had begun, it would seem, to feel in 
his sensitive person the reaction of so much excitement and 
exaltation, and was for a short time ill and miserable, feel- 
ing the horror of the gathering tempest which began to rise 
round him on every side. But he was reinvigorated by vari- 
ous successes in Eome itself and by the still greater encour- 
agement given by the arrival of the first rebel, the Lord of 
Viterbo, Giovanni di Vico, who came in the guise of friend- 
ship and with offers of aid, but at the same time with airs 
of importance and pretension which Cola did not approve. 
He was promptly secured by the usual but too easy method 
of an invitation to a banquet, a snare into which the Eoman 
nobles seem to have fallen with much readiness, and was 
imprisoned. Then Cola, fully restored to himself, prepared 
to meet his foes. It was winter weather, a dark and cold 
November, when the rumour rose that the Colonna were 
approaching Eome. Cola called together his army, which 
had been increased by some bands of allies from neigh- 
bouring cities, and was headed by several Orsini of another 
branch of the house. He had already encouraged the people 
by public addresses, in which he related the appearance to 
him first of St. Martin, who told him to have no fear, and 
secondly of St. Boniface, who declared himself the enemy 
of the Colonna, who wronged the Church of God. Such 



454 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

visions show something of the disturbed condition of the 
Tribune's mind vainly trying to strengthen himself in a 
confidence which he did not feel. On the twentieth of 
November, in the gray of the morning, the great bell rang, 
and the trumpets sounded for the approach of the enemy : 
and with his forces divided into three bands, one under 
his own command, the others led by Cola and Giordano 
Orsini, he set forth to meet the rebels who by the gate of 
St. Lorenzo were drawing near to Rome. 

The enemy had no great mind for the battle. They had 
marched all night through the bitter rain and cold. Old 
Stefano had been attacked by fever and was trembling like 
a leaf. Agapito, his nephew, had had a bad dream in which 
he saw his wife a widow, weeping and tearing her hair. 
They arrived before the gate in indifferent heart and with 
divided counsels, though there had been information sent 
them of a conspiracy within, and that the gate would be 
opened to them without any struggle. Stefano Colonna the 
younger, who was general of the host, then rode up alone 
and demanded entrance. " I am a citizen of Rome. I wish 
to return to my house. I come in the name of the Buono 
Stato," he said. The Captain of the Gate replied with great 
simplicity. It is evident that Stefano had called some one 
by name, expecting admittance. " The guards to whom you 
call are not here. The guard has been changed. I have 
newly come with my men. You cannot by any means come 
in. The gate is locked. Do you not know in what anger 
the people are against you for having disturbed the Buono 
Stato ? Do not you hear the great bell ? I pray you for 
God's sake go away. I wish you no harm. To show you 
that you cannot enter here, I throw out the key." The key, 
which was useless on the outer side of the gate, fell into a 
pool made by the rain : but the noise of its fall startled the 
already troubled nerves of the leaders, and they held hasty 
counsel what to do. " They deliberated if they could retire 



in.] THE BUONO STATO. 455 

with honour," says the chronicler. It is most curions to 
hear this parleying, and the murmur of the army, uneasy 
outside, not knowing what further step to take, in the mis- 
erable November dawn, after their night march. They had 
expected to be admitted by treachery, and evidently had 
not taken this contretemps into their calculations. " They 
resolved to retire with honour," says Papencordt : and for 
this purpose troop by troop advanced to the gate, and then 
turned to retreat : perhaps in obedience to some punctilio of 
ancient warfare. The third battalion contained the pride of 
the army (li pruodi, e le bene a cavallo, e tutta la fortezza), 
young Janni Colonna, at its head. One portion of Cola's 
army had by this time reached the same spot inside, and 
were eager for a sortie, but could not open the gate in the 
usual manner, the key being lost ; they therefore broke open 
one portion of it with great clamour and noise. The right 
side opened, the left remained closed. 

" Janni Colonna approached the gate, hearing the noise within, and 
considering that there had been no order to open it, he thought that 
his friends must have made that noise, and that they had broken the 
gate by force. Thus considering, Janni Colonna quickly crossed the 
threshold with his lance in rest, spurring his courser, riding boldly 
without precaution. He entered the gate of the city. Deh ! how ter- 
rified were the people ! Before him all the cavalry in Eome turned to 
fly. Likewise the Popolo retreated flying, for the space of half a turn. 
But not for this did his friends follow Janni, so that he remained alone 
there, as if he had been called to judgment. Then the Romans took 
courage, perceiving that he was alone: the greater was his misfortune. 
His horse caught its foot in an open cellar (grotto) which was by the left 
side of the gate, and threw him, trampling upon him. Janni perceiving 
his misfortune, called out to the people for quarter, adjuring them for 
God's sake not to strip him of his armour. How can it be said ? He was 
stripped and struck by three blows and died. Fonneruglio de Trejo was 
the first to strike. He (Janni) was a young man of a good disposition. 
His fame was spread through every land. He lay there naked, wounded 
and dead, in a heap against the wall of the city within the gate, his hair 
all plastered with mud, scarcely to be recognised. Then was seen a great 
marvel. The pestilential and disturbed weather began to clear, the sun 
shone out, the sky from being dark and cloudy became serene and gay." 

This, however, was but the first chapter of this dreadful 
tragedy. And still greater misery was to come. 



456 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

"Stefano della Colonna, among the multitude outside in front of 
the gate, demanded anxiously where was his son Janni, and was 
answered : ' We know not what he has done or where he has gone.' 
Then Stefano began to suspect that he had gone in at the gate. He 
therefore spurred his horse and went on alone, and saw his son lying 
on the ground surrounded by many people, between the cellar and the 
pool of water. Seeing that, Stefano fearing for himself, turned back ; 
he went out from the gate and his good sense abandoned him. He 
was confounded ; the loss of his son overcame him. He said not a 
word, but turned back and again entered the gate, if by any means he 
might save his son. When he drew near he saw that his son was 
dead. The question now was to save his own life, and he turned back 
again sadly. As he went out of the gate, and was passing under the 
Tower, a great piece of stone struck him on the shoulder and his horse 
on the croup. Then followed lances, thrown from every side. The 
wounded horse threw out its heels, and the rider unable to keep his 
seat fell to the ground, when the Popolo rushed upon him in front of 
the gate, in that place where the image stands, in the middle of the 
road. There he lay naked in sight of the people and of every one who 
passed by. He had lost one foot and was wounded in many places, 
one terrible blow having struck him between the nose and the eyes. 
Janni was wounded only in the breast and in one of his feet. Then 
the people flung themselves forth from the gate furiously without order 
or leader, seeking merely whom to kill. They met the young Cava- 
liers, foremost of whom was Pietro of Agapito di Colonna who had 
been Preefect of Marseilles, and a priest. He had never used arms till 
that day. He fell from his horse and could not recover himself, the 
ground being so slippery, but fled into a vineyard close by. Bald he 
was, and old, praying for God's sake to be forgiven. But vain was 
his prayer. First his money was taken, then his arms, then his life. 
He lay in that vineyard naked, dead, bald, fat — not like a man of war. 
Near him lay another baron, Pandolfo of the lords of Belvedere. In a 
small space lay twelve of them ; prostrate they lay. All the rest of 
the army, horsemen as well as footmen, flung their arms from them 
here and there, and without order, in great terror, turned their backs : 
and there was not one who struck a blow." 



Thus ended the first attack upon the Tribune — horribly, 
vilely, with panic on both sides, and the rage of wild beasts 
among the victorious people, not one on either side, except 
those two murdered Colonnas, bearing himself like a man. 
The record of the struggle, so intense in its brevity, so brutal 
and terrible, with its background of leaden skies and falling 
rain, and the muddy earth upon which both horses and men 
slipped and fell, is placed before us like a picture : and the 
sudden clearing of the weather, the sun breaking out sud- 



in.] THE BUONO STATO. 457 

denly -upon those white prostrate figures, white and red with 
horrible wounds. There could not be a more appalling scene 
— amid all the records of intestine warfare one of the most 
squalid, unredeemed even by any feat of arms; for poor 
young Janni walked into the snare unconscious, and a blind 
chance, horrible and unpremeditated, seemed to reign over 
all — all but the father, heart-broken, retiring by instinct 
in the first discovery of danger, then turning back to save, 
if it were possible, his dying boy, who had been so brutally 
struck down and cut to pieces. The old father of all, the 
great Stefano, too old for war, and trembling with fever, 
was borne along in the crowd of the flying, to hide his 
bereaved head in his old fortress and sternly lament his 
children lost. 

Cola, the chronicle says, shared the consternation of the 
people when young Janni's noble figure appeared in the 
opening of the gate. The Tribune's banner was overturned 
in the backward rush of the people before that solitary 
invader : and he himself, raising his eyes to heaven, cried 
out no other word than this : " Ah, God, hast thou betrayed 
me? " But when the sudden rush of murder and pursuit 
was over he recovered all his dramatic instincts along with 
his courage. The silver trumpets were sounded, a wreath 
of olive was placed upon his head above the silver crown, 
he waved his steel wand in the now brilliant sunshine, and 
marched into Rome, triumphant — as indeed he had good 
reason to be — to the Church of the Ara Coeli, where he 
deposited the olive crown and the steel wand before the 
altar of the Virgin. " After this," says the indignant chron- 
icler, " he never carried sceptre again, nor wore crown, nor 
had a banner borne over his head." Once more he addressed 
the people from the Parlatorio, with the intonation of vic- 
tory in every word. Drawing his sword, he wiped it with 
his robe, and said : " I have cut off with this such a head 
as neither the Pope nor the Emperor could touch." 



458 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

Meanwhile the three dead Colonnas had been carried into 
Kome to the chapel of their house in the Ara Cceli. " The 
Contesse (the relations, wives and sisters) came, attended by- 
many women tearing their hair, to wail (ululare) over the 
dead," but Cola had them driven away and forbade any 
funeral honours. " If they trouble me any more about these 
accursed corpses," he said, " I will have them thrown into a 
ditch. They were perjurers — they were not worthy to be 
buried." The three dead knights were carried secretly by 
night to the Church of San Silvestro, and buried by the monks 
senza ululato, without any lament made over them. Thus 
ended the noble Colonna, the hopes of the house — and with 
them, though he knew it not, the extravagant hopes and 
miraculous good fortune of Cola di Rienzi, which began to 
fall from that day. 

We have dwelt upon the details of this history, because 
there is scarcely any other which gives so clear a vision of 
the streets and palaces, the rushing of the Popolo, the 
uncertain counsels of the nobles, the mingled temerity and 
panic which prevailed among all on both sides. The con- 
fusion is extraordinary ; the ignorant crowd with its enthu- 
siast leader scarcely less ignorant of men and the just course 
of human affairs, who defied with a light heart the greatest 
powers in Christendom, and retreated before the terrific 
vision of one young warrior in the gate : the nobles with 
their army, which sought only how to get away again with- 
out disgrace when they found themselves in front of a 
defended gate, and fled before a rabble sortie, of men as 
much frightened as themselves, and brave only when pur- 
suing another demoralised troop. Whether we look to one 
side or the other, the effect is equally vivid. The reve- 
lation, at first so romantic and splendid, if always fantastic 
and theatrical, falls now into a squalid horror and mad brag, 
and cowardice, and fury, in which the spectacle of the Trib- 
une, wiping the sword guiltless of blood upon his mantle, 



III.] 



THE BUONO STATO. 



459 



reaches perhaps the highest point of tragic ridicule : while 
all the chivalry of Rome galloping along the muddy roads 
to their strongholds, flying before a civic mob, is its lowest 
point of humiliating misery. It seems almost impossible to 
believe that the best blood and highest names of Italy, as 
well as on the other side its most visionary aspirations, 
should come to such degrading confusion and downfall. 



' "^sspj / ■ ^bjumsSSj i 






m^M 




PORTA DEL POPOLO (FLAMINIAN GATE). 










THEATRE OF MARCELLUS. 



CHAPTER IV. 



DECLINE AND FALL. 



AFTER so strange and so complete a victory over one 
party, had the Tribune pushed his advantage, and 
gone against the other with all the prestige of his triumph, 
he would in all probability have ended the resistance of the 
nobles altogether. But he did not do this. He had no de- 
sire for any more fighting. It is supposed, with insufficient 
reason we think, that personally he was a coward. What is 
more likely is that so sensitive and nervous a man (to use 
the jargon of our own times) must have suffered, as any fine 
temperament would have done, from that scene at the gate 
of San Lorenzo, and poor young Janni Colonna lying in his 
blood ; and that when he declared " he would draw his sword 

460 



ch. iv.] DECLINE AND FALL. 461 

no more," lie did so with, a sincere disgust for all such brutal 
methods. His own ways of convincing people were by argu- 
ment and elocution, and pictures on the walls, which, if they 
did not convince, did nobody any harm. The next scene, 
however, which he prepared for his audience does not look 
much like the horror for which we have given him credit. 
He had informed his followers before he first set out against 
the nobles that he was taking his son with him — something 
in the tone with which the presence of a Prince Imperial 
might be proclaimed to an army ; and we now find the young 
Lorenzo placed still more in the foreground. The day after 
that dreadful victory Cola called together the militia of the 
city by the most touching argument. " Come with me," he 
said, "and afterwards you shall have your pay." They 
turned out accordingly to accompany him, wondering, but 
not knowing what he had in his mind. 

"The trumpets sounded at the place where the fight (sconfitto) had 
taken place. No one knew what was to be done there. He went with 
his son to the very spot where Stefano Colonna had died. There was 
still there a little pool of water. Cola made his son dismount and 
threw over him the water which was still tinged with the blood of 
Stefano, and said to him : ' Be thou a Knight of Victory.' All around 
wondered and were stupefied. Then he gave orders that all the com- 
manders should strike his son on the shoulder with their swords. 
This done he returned to the Capitol, and said : ' Go your ways. We 
have done a common work. All our sires were Romans, the country 
expects that we should fight for her. ' When this was said the minds 
of the people were much exercised, and some would never bear arms 
again. Then the Tribune began to be greatly hated, and people 
began to talk among themselves of his arrogance which was not 
small. ' ' 

This grotesque and horrible ceremony seems to have done 
Cola more harm than all that had gone before. The leader 
of a revolution should have no sons. The excellent instinct 
of providing for his family after him, and making himself 
a stepping stone for his children, though proceeding from 
" what is best within the soul," has spoiled many a history. 
Cola di Rienzi was a most conspicuous and might have been 



462 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

a great man : but Rienzo di Cola, which would have been his 
son's natural name, was nobody, and is never heard of after 
this terrible baptism of blood, so abhorrent to every natural 
and generous impulse. Did the gazers in the streets see the 
specks of red on young Lorenzo's dress as he rode along 
through the city from the Tiburtine gate, and through the 
Forum to the Capitol, where all the train was dismissed so 
summarily ? As the Cavallerotti, the better part of the 
gathering, turned their horses and rode away offended, no 
doubt the news ran through quarter after quarter with them. 
The blood of Stefanello, the heir of great Colonna ! And 
thoughts of the old man desolate, and of young Janni so 
brave and gay, would come into many a mind. They might 
be tyrants, but they were familiar Roman faces, known to 
all, and with some reason to be proud, if proud they were ; 
not like this upstart, who called honest men away from their 
own concerns to do honour to his low-born son, and sent them 
packing about their business afterwards without so much as 
a dinner to celebrate the new knight ! 

This was all in November, the 20th and 21st : and it was 
on the 20th of May that Cola had received his election upon 
the Capitol and been proclaimed master of the destinies of 
the universe, by inference, as master of Rome. Six months, 
no more, crammed full of gorgeous pageants and exciting 
events. Then, notwithstanding the extraordinary character 
of his revolution, he had been believed in, and encouraged 
by all around. He had received the sanction of the Pope, 
the friendly congratulations of the great Italian towns, and 
above all the applause, enthusiastic and overflowing, of 
Petrarch the greatest of living poets. By degrees all these 
sympathies and applauses had fallen from him. Florence 
and the other great cities had withdrawn their friendship, 
the Pope had cancelled his commission, the Pope's Vicar 
had left the Tribune's side. The more his vanity and self- 
admiration srrew, the more his friends had fallen from him. 



iv.] DECLINE AND FALL. 465 

That very day — the day after the defeat of the Colonna, 
before the news could have reached any one at a distance, 
Petrarch on his way to Italy, partly brought back thither 
by anxiety about his friend, received from another friend a 
copy of one of the arrogant and extraordinary letters which 
Cola was sending about the world, and read and re-read it 
and was stupefied. " What answer can be made to it ? I 
know not," he cries. " I see that fate pursues the country, 
and on whatever side I turn, I find subjects of grief and 
trouble. If Rome is ruined what hope remains for Italy ? 
and if Italy is degraded what will become of me ? What 
can I offer but tears ?" A few days later, arrived at Genoa, 
the poet wrote to Rienzi himself in reproof and sorrow : 

" Often, I confess it, I have had occasion upon thy account to 
repeat with immense joy what Cicero puts in the mouth of Scipio 
Africanus : — ' What is this great and delightful sound that comes to 
my ears ? ' And certainly nothing could be better applied to the 
splendour of thy name and to the frequent and joyful account of thy 
doings : and it was indeed good to my heart to speak to thee in that 
exhortation, full of thy praise and of encouragements to continue, which 
I sent thee. Deli ! do nothing, I conjure thee, to make me now ask, 
whence is this great and fatal rumour which strikes my ear so pain- 
fully ? Take care, I beseech thee, not thyself to soil thine own splendid 
fame. No man in the world except thyself can shake the foundations 
of the edifice thou hast constructed ; but that which thou hast founded 
thou canst ruin : for to destroy his own proper work no man is so able 
as the architect. You know the road by which you have risen to 
glory : if you turn back you shall soon find yourself in the lowest 
place ; and going down is naturally the quicker. ... I was hasten- 
ing to you and with all my heart : but I turn upon the way. Other 
than what you were, I would not see you. Adieu, Rome, to thee also 
adieu, if that is true which I have heard. Eather than come to thee I 
would go to the Indies, to the end of the world. . . . Oh, how ill the 
beginning agrees with the end ! Oh, miserable ears of mine that, 
accustomed to the sound of glory, do not know how to bear such an- 
nouncements of shame ! But may not these be lies and my words 
false ? Oh that it might be so ! How glad should I be to confess my 
error ! . . . If thou art indeed so little careful of thy fame, think at 
least of mine. You well know by what tremendous tempest I am 
threatened, how many are the crowd of faultfinders ready to ruin me. 
While there is still time put your mind to it, be vigilant, look well to 
what you do, guide yourself continually by good counsel, consider with 
yourself, not deceiving yourself, what you are, what you were, from 
whence you have come, and to what point, without detriment to the 



466 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

public weal, you can attain : how to attire yourself, what name to 
assume, what hopes to awaken, and of what doctrine to make open 
confession ; understanding always that not Lord, but solely Minister, 
you are of the Republic." 

The share which Petrarch thus takes to himself in Cola's 
fortunes may seem exaggerated ; but it must be remembered 
that the Colonna were his chief patrons and friends, that it 
was under their protecting shadow that he had risen to 
fame, and that his warm friendship for Kienzi had already 
deeply affected the terms of his relationship with them. 
That relationship had come to a positive breach so far as 
his most powerful protector, the Cardinal Giovanni, was 
concerned, a breach of feeling on one side as well as of pro- 
tection on the other. His letter to the Cardinal after this 
catastrophe, condoling with him upon the death of his 
brothers, is one of the coldest of compositions, very unlike 
the warm and eager affection of old, and consisting chiefly 
of elaborate apologies for not having written. The poet 
had completely committed himself in respect to the Trib- 
une ; he had hailed his advent in the most enthusiastic terms, 
he had proclaimed him the hope of Italy, he had staked 
his own reputation upon his friend's disinterestedness and 
patriotism ; therefore this downfall with all its humiliating 
circumstances, the vanities and self-intoxication which had 
brought it about, were intolerable to Petrarch : his own 
credit as well as Cola's was concerned. He had been so 
rash as to answer for the Tribune in all quarters, to pledge 
his own judgment, his power of understanding men, almost 
his honour, on Cola's behalf ; and to be proved so wrong, so 
little capable of estimating justly the man whom he believed 
himself to know so well, was bitterness unspeakable to him. 

The interest of his tragic disappointment and sorrow is 
at the same time enhanced by the fact, that the other party 
to this dreadful quarrel had been the constant objects of 
the poet's eulogies and enthusiasm. It is to Petrarch that 



iv,] DECLINE AND FALL. 467 

we owe most of our knowledge of the Colonna family at 
this remarkable period of a long history which is filled 
with the oft-repeated incidents of an endless struggle for 
power, either with the rebellious Romans themselves, or 
with the other little less great family of the Orsini who, 
unfortunately for themselves, had no Petrarch to bring 
them fully into the light of day. The many allusions 
in Petrarch's letters, his reminiscences of the ample and 
gracious household, all so friendly, and caressing, all of 
one mind as to his own poetical qualities, and anxious to 
heap honours upon him, light up for us the face of the 
much complicated story, and give interest to many an 
elaborate poetical or philosophical disquisition. Especially 
the figure of the father, the old Stefano with his seven sons 
and the innumerable tribe of nephews and cousins, not to 
say grandsons, still more cherished, who surrounded him — 
rises clear, magnanimous, out of the disturbed and stormy 
landscape. His brief appearances in the chronicle which 
we have quoted, with a keen brief speech here and there, 
imperative, in strong accents of common sense as well as 
of power, add a touch of energetic life to the many anec- 
dotes and descriptions of a more elaborate kind. And the 
poet would seem never to have failed in his admiration for 
the old Magnanimo. At an earlier period he had described 
in several letters to the son Giovanni, the Cardinal, the 
reception given to him at Rome, and conversations, some 
of them very remarkable. One scene above all, of which 
Petrarch reminds Stefano himself in his bereavement, gives 
us a most touching picture of the noble old man. 

" One day at sunset you and I alone were walking by that spacious 
way which leads from your house to the Capitol, when we paused at 
that point where it is crossed by the other road by which on one hand 
you ascend to the Arch of Camillus, and on the other go down to the 
Tiber: we paused there without interruption from any and talked 
together of the condition of your house and family, which, often as- 
sailed by the enmity of strangers, was at that time moved by grievous 



468 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap 

internal commotions : — when the discourse fell upon one of your sons 
with whom, more by the work of scandal-mongers than by paternal 
resentment, you were angry, and by your goodness it was given to me, 
what many others had not been able to obtain, to persuade you to 
receive him again to your good grace. After you had lamented his 
faults to me, changing your aspect all at once you said (I remember 
not only the substance of your discourse but the very words). ' This 
son of mine, thy friend, whom, thanks to thee, I will now receive again 
with paternal affection, has vomited forth words concerning my old 
age, of which it is best to be silent ; but since I cannot refuse you, let 
us put a stone over the past and let a full amnesty, as people say, be 
conceded. From my lips I promise thee, not another word shall be 
heard. 

" ' One thing I will tell you, that you may make perpetual remem- 
brance of it. It is made a reproach to my old age that I am mixed 
up with warlike factions more than is becoming, and more than there 
is any occasion, and that thus I will leave to my sons an inheritance 
of peril and hate. But as God is true, I desire you to believe that for 
love of peace alone I allow myself to be drawn into war. Whether it 
be the effect of my extreme old age which chills and enfeebles the 
spirit in this already stony bosom, or whether it proceeds from my 
long observation of human affairs, it is certain that more than others 
I am greedy of repose and peace. But fixed and immovable as is my 
resolution never to shrink from trouble though I may prefer a settled 
and tranquil life, I find it better, since fate compels me, to go down to 
the sepulchre fighting, than to submit, old as I am, to servitude. And 
for what you say of my heirs I have but one thing to reply. Listen 
well, and fix my words in your mind. God grant that I may leave my 
inheritance to my sons. But all in opposition to my desires are the 
decrees of fate (the words were said with tears) : contrary to the 
order of nature it is I who shall be the heir of all my sons.' And thus 
saying, your eyes swollen with tears, you turned away." 

At the corner where the Corso is crossed by the street 
which borders the Forum of Trajan, let whoso will pause 
amid the bustle of modern traffic and think for a moment 
of those two figures standing together talking, "without 
interruption from any one," in the middle of that open 
space, while the long level rays of the sunset streamed upon 
them from beyond the Flaminian gate. Was there some 
great popular meeting at the Capitol which had cleared the 
streets, the hum of voices rising on the height, but all quiet 
here at this dangerous, glorious hour, when fever is abroad 
and the women and children are all indoors ? "I made 
light of it, I confess," says Petrarch, though he acknowl- 



iv.] DECLINE AND FALL. 469 

edges that lie told the story of this dreadful presentiment 
to the Cardinal, who, sighing, exclaimed, " Would to God 
that my father's prediction may not come true ! " But old 
Stefano with his weight of years upon him, and his front 
like Jove, turned away sighing, stroking his venerable 
beard, unmoved by the poet's reassurances, with that terri- 
ble conviction in his heart. They were all young and he 
old: daring, careless young men, laughing at that same 
Cola of the little albergo, the son of the wine-shop, who said 
he was to be an emperor. But the shadow on the grand- 
sire's heart was one of those which events cast before them. 
Young Janni was to go among the first, the brave boy who 
ought to have been heir of all. To him, too, his grand- 
father, the great Stefano, the head of the full house, was to 
be heir. 

The terrible event of the Porta di San Lorenzo shows in 
still darker colours when we look at it closer. Stefano, the 
son of Stefano, and Janni his son, are the two most con- 
spicuous names : but there were more. Camilla, Jiglio natu- 
rale, morto il 20 November 1347, all' assalto di Porta San 
Lorenzo; Pietro, Jiglio naturale, rimase occiso a Porta San 
Lorenzo. Giovanni of Agapito, Pietro of Agapito, nephews 
of old Stefano, morti nelV assalto di Porta San Lorenzo. 
Seven in all Avere the scions of Colonna who ended their 
life that horrible November morning in the mud and rain ; 
or more dreadful still under the morning sun which broke 
out so suddenly, showing those white dreadful forms all 
stripped and abandoned, upon the fatal way. It was little 
wonder if between the house of Colonna and the upstart 
Cola no peace should ever be possible after a lost battle so 
fatal and so humiliating to the race. 

Perhaps after the first moment of terrible joy and relief 
to find himself uninjured, and his enemies so deeply pun- 
ished, compunction seized the sensitive mind of Cola : or 
perhaps he was alarmed by the displeasure of the Pope, his 



470 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

abandonment by all bis friends, and tbe solemn adjuration 
of Petrarch. It is certain that after this he dropped many 
of his pretensions, subdued the fantastic arrogance of his 
titles and superscription, gave up his claim to elect em- 
perors and preside over the fortunes of the world, and 
began to devote himself with humility to the government 
of the city which had fallen into something of its old dis- 
orderliness within the walls ; while outside there was again, 
as of old, no security at all. The rebel barons had resumed 
their turbulent sway, the robbers reappeared in all their old 
coverts ; and once again every road to Eome was as unsafe 
as that on which the traveller of old fell among thieves. 
Cola, Knight and Lieutenant of our Lord the Pope, now 
headed his proclamations, instead of Nicolas, severe and 
clement. His crown of silver and sceptre of steel, fantastic 
emblems, were hung up before the shrine of Our Lady in 
the Ara Coeli, and everything about him was toned down 
into gravity. By this means he kept up a semblance of 
peace, and replaced the Buono Stato in its visionary shrine. 
But Cola had gone too far, and lost the confidence of the 
people too completely to rise again. His very humility 
would no doubt be against him, showing the weakness 
which a man unsupported on any side should perhaps have 
been bold enough to defy, hardihood being now his only 
chance in face of so many assailants. Pope Clement thun- 
dered against him from Avignon ; the nobles lay in Pales- 
trina and Marino, and many a smaller fortress besides, 
irreconcilable, watching every opportunity of assailing him. 
The country was once more devastated all round Rome, 
provisions short, corn dear, and funds failing as well as 
authority and respect. And Cola's heart had failed him 
along with his prosperity. He had bad dreams ; he him- 
self tells the story of this moral downfall with a forlorn 
attempt to show that it was not, after all, his visible ene- 
mies, or the power of men, which had cast him down. 



iv.] DECLINE AND FALL. 471 

" After my triumph over the Colonna," he writes, "just when my 
dominion seemed strongest, my stoutness of heart was taken from me, 
and I was seized by visionary terrors. Night after night awakened by 
visions and dreams I cried out, ' The Capitol is falling,' or ' The enemy 
comes ! ' For some time an owl alighted every night on the summit 
of the Capitol, and though chased away by my servants always came 
back again. For twelve nights this took my sleep and all quiet of 
mind from me. It was thus that dreams and nightbirds tormented 
one who had not been afraid of the fury of the Roman nobles, nor 
terrified by armies of armed men." 

The brag was a forlorn one, but it was all of which the 
fallen Tribune was now capable. Cola received back the 
Vicar of the Pope, who probably was not without some 
affection for his old triumphant colleague, with gladness 
and humility, and seated that representative of ecclesiastical 
authority beside himself in his chair of judgment, before 
which he no longer summoned the princes and great ones of 
the earth. The end came in an unexpected way, of which 
the writer of the Vita gives the popular account: it is a 
little different from that of the graver history but only in 
details. A certain Pepino, Count Palatine of Altamura, a 
fugitive from Naples, whose object in Eome was to enlist 
soldiers for the service of Louis of Hungary, then eager to 
avenge the murder of his brother Andrew, the husband of 
Queen Joan of Naples — had taken up his abode in the city. 
He was in league with several of the nobles, and ready to 
lend a hand in any available way against the Tribune. 
Fearing to be brought before the tribunal of Cola, and to be 
obliged to explain the object of his residence in Eome, he 
shut himself up in his palace and made an effort to raise 
the city against its head. 

"Messer the Conte Paladino at this time threw a bar (barricade) 
across the street, under the Arch of Salvator (to defend his quarters 
apparently). A night and a day the bells of St. Angelo in Pescheria 
rang a stuormo, but no one attempted to break down the bar. The 
Tribune sent a party of horsemen against the bar, and an officer named 
Scarpetta, wounded by a lance, fell dead in the skirmish. When the 
Tribune heard that Scarpetta was dead and that the people were not 
affected by the sound of the tocsin, although the bell of St. Angelo 



472 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

continued to ring, he sighed deeply : chilled by alarm he wept : he 
knew not what to do. His heart was beaten down and brought low. 
He had not the courage of a child. Scarcely could he speak. He be- 
lieved that ambushes were laid for him in the city, which was not true, 
for there was as yet no open rebellion : no one, as yet, had risen 
against the Tribune. But their zeal had become cold : and he believed 
that he would be killed. What can be said more ? He knew he had 
not the courage to die in the service of the people as he had promised. 
Weeping and sighing, he addressed as many as were there, saying that 
he had done well, but that from envy the people were not content with 
him. 'Now in the seventh month am I driven from my dominion.' 
Having said these words weeping, he mounted his horse and sounded 
the silver trumpets, and bearing the imperial insignia, accompanied by 
armed men, he came down as in a triumph, and went to the Castle of 
St. Angelo, and there shut himself in. His wife, disguised in the habit 
of a monk, came from the Palazzo de Lalli. When the Tribune de- 
scended from his greatness the others also wept who were with him, 
and the miserable people wept. His chamber was found to be full of 
many beautiful things, and so many letters were found there that you 
would not believe it. The barons heard of this downfall, but three 
days passed before they returned to Rome because of their fear. Even 
when they had come back fear was in their hearts. They made a 
picture of the Tribune on the wall of the Capitol, as if he were riding, 
but with his head down and his feet above. They also painted Cecco 
Manneo, who was his Notary and Chancellor, and Conte, his nephew, 
who held the castle of Civita Vecchia. Then the Cardinal Legate 
entered into Rome, and proceeded against him and distributed the 
greater part of his goods, and proclaimed him to be a heretic." 

Thus suddenly Cola fell, as he had risen. His heart had 
failed him without reason or necessity, for the city had not 
shown any open signs of rebellion, and there seems to have 
been no reason why he should have fled to St. Angelo. The 
people, though they did not respond to his call to arms, took 
no more notice of the tocsin of his opponent or of his cry of 
Death to the Tribune. Eome lay silent pondering many 
things, caring little how the tide turned, perhaps, with the 
instinct of Lo Popolo everywhere, thinking that a change 
might be a good thing : but it was no overt act on the part 
of the populace which drove its idol away. The act was 
entirely his own — his heart had failed him. In these days 
we should say his nerves had broken down. The phrase- 
ology is different, but the things were the same. His down- 
fall, however, was not perhaps quite so sudden in reality as 



iv.] DECLINE AND FALL. 473 

it appears in the chronicle. It would seem that he endeav- 
oured to escape to Civita Vecchia where his nephew was 
governor, but was not received there, and had to come back 
to Eome, and hide his head once more for a short time in 
St. Angelo. But it is certain that before the end of Janu- 
ary, 1438^ he had finally disappeared, a shamed and name- 
less man, his titles abolished, his property divided among 
his enemies. Never was a downfall more sudden or more 
complete. 

Stefano Colonna and his friends re-entered Eome with 
little appearance of triumph. The remembrance of the 
Porta San Lorenzo was too recent for rejoicings, and it must 
be put to the credit of the old chief, bereaved and sorrowful, 
that no reprisals were made, that a general amnesty was 
proclaimed, and the peace of the city preserved. Cola's 
family, at least for the time, remained peaceably at Eome, 
and met with no harm. We hear nothing of the unfortunate 
young Knight of Victory who had been sprinkled with the 
blood of the Colonnas. The Tribune went down like a 
stone, and for the moment, of him who had filled men's 
mouths and minds with so many strange tidings, there was 
no more to tell. 

Cola's absence from Eome lasted for seven years ; of 
which time there is no mention whatever in the Vita, which 
concerns itself exclusively with things that happened in 
Eome; but his steps can be very clearly traced. We never 
again find our enthusiast, he who first ascended the Capitol 
in a passion of disinterested zeal and patriotism, approved 
by every honest visionary and every suffering citizen, a 
man chosen of God to deliver the city. That his motives 
were ever ill motives, or that he had begun to seek his own 
prosperity alone, it would be hard to say : but he appears 
to us henceforward in a changed aspect as the eager co^ 
spirator, the commonplace plotter and schemer, hungry for 
glory and plunder, and using every means, by hook or by 



474 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

crook, to recover what lie lias lost, which is a far more famil- 
iar figure than the ideal Beformer, the disinterested revolu- 
tionary. We meet with that vulgar hero a hundred times 
in the stormy record of Italian politics, a man without scru- 
ples, sticking at nothing. But Bienzi was of a different 
nature : he was at once a less and a greater sinner. It would 
be unjustifiable to say that he ever gave up the thought of 
the Buono Stato, or ceased to desire the welfare of Borne. 
But in the long interval of his disappearance from the scene, 
he not only plotted like the other, but used that higher 
motive, and the mystic elements that were in the air, and 
the tendency towards all that was occult, and much that 
was noble in the aspirations of the visionaries of his time, 
to further the one object, his return to power, to the Capitol, 
and to the dominion of Borne. A conspirator is the com- 
monplace of Italian story, at every period: and the pre- 
tender, catching at every straw to get back to his unsteady 
throne, besieging every potentate that can help him, plead- 
ing every inducement from the highest to the lowest — self- 
interest, philanthropy, the service of God, the most generous 
and the meanest sentiments — is also a very well known 
figure; but it is rare to find a man truly affected by the 
most mystic teachings of religion, yet pressing them also 
into his service, and making use of what he conceives to be 
the impulses of the Holy Spirit for the furtherance of his 
private ends, without, nevertheless, so far as can be asserted, 
becoming a hypocrite or insincere in the faith which he pro- 
fesses. 

This was the strange development to which the Tribune 
came. After some vain attempts to awaken in the Boman 
territory friends who could help him, his heart broken by 
the fickleness and desertion of the Bopolo in which he had 
trusted, he took refuge in the wild mountain country of the 
Apennines, where there existed a rude and strange religious 
party, aiming in the midst of the most austere devotion at a 



iv.] DECLINE AND FALL- 475 

total overturn of society, and that return of a primeval age 
of innocence and bliss which is so seductive to the mystical 
mind. In the caves and dens of the earth and in the moun- 
tain villages and little convents, there dwelt a severe sect of 
the Franciscans, men whose love of Poverty, their founder's 
bride and choice, was almost stronger than their love of that 
founder himself. The Fraticelli were only heretics by dint 
of holding their Rule more strictly than the other religious 
of their order, and by indulging in ecstatic visions of a reno- 
vated state and a purified people — visions less personal 
though not less sincere or pious, than those which inflicted 
upon Francis himself the semblance of the wounds of the 
Redeemer, in that passion of pity and love which possessed 
his heart. The exile among them, who had himself been 
aroused out of the obscurity of ordinary life by a correspond- 
ing dream, found himself stimulated and inspired over again 
by the teaching of these visionaries. One of them, it is said, 
found him out in the refuge where he thought himself abso- 
lutely unknown, and, addressing him by name, told him 
that he had still a great career before him, and that it 
should be his to restore to Rome the double reign of univer- 
sal dominion, to establish the Pope and the Empire in the 
imperial city, and reconcile for ever those two joint rulers 
appointed of God. 

It is curious to find that what is to some extent the exist- 
ing state of affairs — the junction in one place of the two 
monarchs of the earth — should have been the dream and 
hope of religious visionaries in the middle of the fourteenth 
century. The Emperor to them was but a glorified King of 
Italy, with a vague and unknown world behind him ; and 
they believed that the Millennium would come, when that 
supreme sovereign on the Capitol and the Holy Father from 
the seat of St. Peter should sway the world at their will. 
The same class, in the same order now — so much as con- 
fiscation after confiscation permits that order to exist — 



476 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

would fight to its last gasp against the forced conjunction, 
which its fathers before it thus thought of as the thing 
most to be prayed for, and schemed for, in the whole world. 

When others beside the Fraticelli discovered Rienzi's 
hiding-place, and he found himself, or imagined himself, in 
some danger, he went to Prague to seek shelter with the 
Emperor Charles IV., and a remarkable correspondence 
took place between that potentate on one side and the 
Archbishop of Prague, his counsellor, and Eienzi on the 
other, in which the exile promised many splendours to 
the monarch, and offered himself as his guide to Eome, and 
to lend him the weight of his influence there with the people 
over whom Pienzi believed that he would yet himself pre- 
side with greater power than ever. That Charles himself 
should reply to these letters, and reason the matter out with 
this forlorn wanderer, shows of itself what a power was in 
his words and in the fervour of his purpose. But it is ill 
talking between a great monarch and a penniless exile, and 
Charles seems to have felt no scruple in handing him over, 
after full exposition of his views, to the archbishop as a 
heretic. That prelate transferred him to the Pope, to be 
dealt with as a man already excommunicated under the ban 
of the Church, and now once more promulgating strange 
doctrines, ought to be ; and thus his freedom, and his wan- 
dering, and the comparative safety of his life came to an 
end, and a second stage of strange development began. 

The fortunes of Rienzi were at a very low ebb when he 
reached Avignon and fell into the hands of his enemies, of 
those whom he had assailed and those whom he had dis- 
appointed, at that court where there was no one to say a 
good word for him, and where all that was best in him was 
even more greatly against him than that which was worst. 
In the dungeons of Avignon, in the stronghold of the Pope 
who had so much cause to regret having once sanctioned and 
patronised the Tribune, his cause had every appearance of 



iv.] DECLINE AND FALL. 477 

being lost for ever. It was fortunate for him that there 
was no longer a Cardinal Colonna at that court ; but there 
was, at the same time, no champion to take up his cause. 
Things indeed went so badly with him, that he was actually 
condemned to death as a heretic, 'himself allowing that he 
was guilty and worthy of death in some moment of pro- 
found depression, or perhaps with the hope of touching the 
hearts of his persecutors by humility as great as had been the 
pretensions of his brief and exciting reign. For poor Cola 
after all, if the affair at Porta San Lorenzo is left out — 
and that was no fault of his — had done nothing worthy of 
death. He had been carried away by the passion and mad- 
ness of an almost impossible success ; but he had scarcely 
ever been rebellious to the Church, and his vagaries of doc- 
trine were rather due to the mingling together of the clas- 
sical with the religious, and the inflation of certain not 
otherwise unorthodox ideas, than any real rebellion; but 
he carried his prevailing sentiment and character into 
everything, being lower than any in the depths of his down- 
fall as he had been higher than any on the heights of his 
visionary pride and short-lived triumph. 

He was saved from this sentence in a manner as fantas- 
tical as himself. It may be believed that it was never in- 
tended to be carried out, and that, especially after his 
acknowledgment of the justice of his sentence, means 
would have been found of preserving him from its execu- 
tion; very likely, indeed, the curious means which were 
found, originated in some charitable whisper that a plausi- 
ble pretence of a reason for letting him off would not be 
disagreeable to the Pope. He was saved by the suggestion 
that he was a poet ! We have the story in full detail from 
Petrarch himself, who is not without a perception of its 
absurdity, and begins his letter by an indignant descrip- 
tion of the foolish and pretended zeal for poetry of which 
this was so strange an example. " Poetry," he says, " divine 



478 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

gift and vouchsafed by heaven to so few, I see it, friend, if 
not prostituted, at least made into a vulgar thing. 

"I feel my heart rise against this, and you, if I know you well, 
will not tolerate such an abuse for any consideration. Neither at 
Athens, nor at Eome, even in the lifetime of Horace, was there so 
much talk of poets and poetry as at the present day upon the banks 
of the Ehone — although there never was either time or place in 
which men understood it less. But now I will check your rising bile 
by laughter and show how a jest can come in -the midst of melancholy. 

" There has lately come to this court — or rather has not come but 
has been brought — a prisoner, Mccola di Lorenzo, once the formidable 
Tribune of Rome, now of all the men the most unhappy — and what 
is more, not perhaps worthy of the compassion which the misery of 
his present state calls forth. He might have ended his days gloriously 
upon the Capitol, but brought himself down instead, to the great 
shame of the Republic and of the Roman name, into the condition of 
a prisoner, first in Bohemia and now here. Unfortunately, many 
more than I now like to think of are the praises and encouragements 
which I myself have written to him. Lover of virtue as I am, I could 
not do less than exalt and admire the generous undertaking of the 
strong man : and thankful on account of Italy, hoping to see the 
Empire of Rome arise again and secure the peace of the whole world, 
my heart was inundated by such joy, on account of so many fine 
events, that to contain myself was impossible ; and it seemed to me 
that I almost took part in his glory by giving encouragement and 
comfort to his enterprise : by which as both his messengers and his 
letters showed, he was himself set on fire — and always more and 
more willingly I set myself to increase this stimulus with every 
argument I could think of, and to feed the flame of that ardent 
spirit, well knowing that every generous heart kindles at the fire of 
praise and glory. For this reason with an applause which to some 
seemed extravagant but to me very just, I exalted his every act, 
encouraging him to complete the magnanimous task which he had 
begun. The letters which I then wrote went through many hands: 
and since I am no prophet and still less was he ever a prophet I am 
not ashamed of what I wrote : for certainly what he did in those 
days and promised to do, not in my opinion alone but to the praise 
and admiration of the whole world, were very worthy, and I would 
not abolish the memory of these letters of mine from my memory 
solely because he prefers an ignoble life to a glorious death. But it is 
useless to discuss a thing which is impossible; and however much I 
might desire to destroy them I could not do it. As soon as they 
come into the hands of the public, the writer has no more power 
over them. Let us return to our story. 

"This man then, who had filled the wicked with terror, the good 
with expectation, and with joyful hope the universe, has come before 
this Court humiliated and abject ; and he whom the people of Rome 
and all the cities of Italy exalted, was seen passing through our streets 
between two soldiers, affording a miserable spectacle to the rabble 



iv.] DECLINE AND FALL. 479 

eager to see face to face one whose name they had heard to sound so 
high. He came from the King of Eome (a title of the Emperor) to the 
Roman Pontiff, oh marvellous commerce ! As soon as he had arrived 
the Pope committed to three princes of the Church the charge of ex- 
amining into his cause, and judging of what punishment he was guilty 
who had attempted to free the State." 

The letter is too long to quote entire, and Petrarch, 
though maintaining the cause of his former friend, is per- 
haps too anxious to make it clear that, had Eienzi given 
due attention to his own letters, this great reverse would 
never have happened to him ; yet it is on the whole a noble 
plea for the Tribune. " In this man," the poet declares, 
" I had placed the last hope of Italian liberty, and, having 
long known and loved him from the moment when he put 
his hand to this great work, he seemed to me worthy of 
all veneration and honour. Whatever might be the end 
of the work I cannot cease to hold as magnificent its begin- 
ning:" and he regrets with great indignation that it was 
this beginning which was chiefly brought against him, and 
that his description of himself as Nicolas, severe and 
clement, had more weight with his judges than his good 
government or the happy change that took place in Rome 
during his sway. We must hasten, however, to the irony 
of the Tribune's deliverance. 

"In this miserable state (after so much that is sorrowful, here at 
last is something to laugh at), I learn from the letters of my friends 
that there is still a hope of saving him, and that because of a notion 
which has been spread abroad among the vulgar, that he is a famous 
poet. . . . "What can we think of this ? Truly I, more than I can 
say in words, comfort myself and rejoice in the thought that the 
Muses are so much honoured — and what is still more marvellous, 
among those who never knew anything about them — as to save from 
a fatal sentence a man who is shielded by their name. What greater 
sign of reverence could be given than that the name of Poetry should 
thus save from death a man who rightly or wrongly is abhorred by his 
judges, who has been convicted of the crime laid to his charge and has 
confessed it, and by the unanimous sentence of the tribunal has been 
found worthy of death ? I rejoice, I repeat, I congratulate him and 
the Muses with him : that he should have such patrons, and they so 
unlooked-for an honour — nor would I to a man so unhappy, reduced 



480 THE MAKERS OF MODERN" ROME. [chap. 

to such an extreme of danger and of doubt, grudge the protecting 
name of poet. But if you would know what I think, I will say that 
Niccola di Lorenzo is a man of the greatest eloquence, most persuasive 
and ready of speech, a writer lucid and harmonious and of an elegant 
style. I do not remember any poet whom he has not read ; but this 
no more makes him a poet than a man would be a weaver who 
clothed himself with garments woven by another hand. To merit the 
name of poet it is not enough to have made verses. But this man has 
never that I know written a single line." 

There is not a word of all this in the Vita. To the chron- 
icler, Rienzi, from the moment when he turned his face 
again towards Rome, was never in any danger. As he came 
from Germany to Avignon all the people in the villages 
came out to greet him, and would have rescued him but for 
his continual explanation that he went to the Pope of his 
own will ; nor does his biographer seem to be aware that 
the Tribune ran any risk of his life. He did escape, how- 
ever, by a hair's breadth only, and, as Petrarch had perfect 
knowledge of what was going on, no doubt in the very way 
described by the poet. But he was not delivered from 
prison until Cardinal Albornoz set out for Rome with the 
Pope's orders to pacify and quiet the turbulent city. Many 
and great had been its troubles in those seven years. It 
had fallen back into the old hands — an Orsini and a 
Colonna, a Colonna and an Orsini. There had been a tem- 
porary lull in the year of the Jubilee (1350), when all the 
world flocked to Rome to obtain the Indulgence, and to 
have their sins washed away in the full stream of Papal 
forgiveness. It is said that Rienzi himself made his way 
stealthily back to share in that Indulgence, but without 
making himself known : and the interest of the citizens was 
so much involved in peace, and it was so essential to keep a 
certain rule of order and self-restraint on account of the 
many guests who brought money to the city, that there was 
a temporary lull of its troubles. The town was no more 
than a great inn from Easter to Christmas, and wealth, 
which has always a soothing and quieting influence, poured 




THE TARPEIAN ROCK. ^° f aCe P a 9 e 480. 



iv.] DECLINE AND FALL. 483 

into the pockets of the citizens, fully occupied as they were 
by the care of their guests, and by the continual ceremonials 
and sacred functions of those busy days. The Jubilee 
brought not only masses of pious pilgrims from every part 
of the world, but innumerable lawsuits — cases of conscience 
and of secular disputes — to be settled by the busy Cardinal 
who sat instead of the Pope, hearing daily what every appli- 
cant might have to say. There had been a new temporary 
bridge built in order to provide for the pressure of the 
crowd, and avoid that block of the old bridge of St. Angelo 
which Dante describes in the Inferno, when the mass of 
pilgrims coming and going broke down one of the arches. 
Other large if hasty labours of preparation were also in 
hand. The Capitol had to be repaired, and old churches 
furbished up, and every scrap of drapery and tapestry 
which was to be had employed to make the city fine. So 
that for one year at least there had been no thought but to 
put the best possible face on things, to quench internal dis- 
orders for the moment, and make all kinds of temporary 
arrangements for comfort and accommodation, as is often done 
in a family when important visitors force a salutary self- 
denial upon all ; so that there were a hundred inducements 
to preserve a front of good behaviour and fit decorum before 
the world. 

After the Jubilee however, things fell back once more 
into the old confusion : once more there was robbery and 
violence on every road to Rome ; once more an Orsini and 
a Colonna balanced and struggled with each other as Sena- 
tors, with no time to attend to anything but their personal 
interests, and no thought for the welfare of the people. In 
1352, however, things had come to such a pass that a violent 
remedy had to be tried again, and the Romans once more 
took matters in their own hands and elected an official of 
their own, a certain Cerroni, in the place of the unworthy 
Senators. He however held the position a very short time, 



484 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

and being in his turn deserted by the people, gave up the 
thankless task. That year there was a riot in which the 
Orsini Senator was stoned to death at the foot of the stairs 
which lead to the Capitol, while his colleague Colonna, 
another Stefano, escaped by the other side. Then once 
more the expedient of a popular election was attempted 
and a certain Francesco Baroncelli was elected who styled 
himself the second Tribune of the people. The Pope had 
also attempted to do what he could, once by a committee of 
four Cardinals, constantly by Legates sent to guide and pro- 
tect the ever-troubled city. The hopelessness of these re- 
peated efforts was proved over and over again. Villani the 
historian writes with dismay that " the changes which took 
place in the ancient mother and mistress of the universe 
did not deserve to be recorded because of their frivolity and 
baseness." Baroncelli too fell after a short time, and it 
seemed that no government, and no reformation, could last. 
In the meantime Pope Clement VI. died at Avignon, and 
Innocent VI. reigned in his stead. At the beginning of this 
new reign a new attempt to pacificate Rome, and to restore 
it to order and peace, was made. As it was the general 
feeling that a stranger was the safest ruler in the midst of 
the network of private and family interests in which the 
city was bound, the new Pope with a sincere desire to amel- 
iorate the situation sent the Spanish Cardinal Albornoz to 
the rescue of Rome. All this was in the year 1353 when 
Rienzi, his death sentence remitted because of the illusion 
that he was a poet, lay in prison in Avignon. His story 
was well known: and it was well known too, that the 
people of Rome, after having deserted him, were eager to 
have him back, and had to all appearance repented very 
bitterly their behaviour to him. The Pope adopted the 
strong and daring expedient of taking the old demagogue 
from his prison and giving him a place in the Legate's coun- 
cil. There was no intention of replacing him in his former 



iv.] DECLINE AND FALL. 485 

position, but he was eager to accept the secondary place, 
and to give the benefit of his advice and guidance to the 
Legate. All appearance of his old ambition seemed indeed 
to have died out of him. He went simply in the train of 
Albornoz to Montefiascone, 1 which had long been the head- 
quarters of the Papal representative, and from whence the 
Legate conducted a campaign against the towns of the 
"Patrimony," each of whom, like the mother city, occa- 
sionally secured a gleam of uncertain independence, or else 
— which was oftener the case — fell into the clutches of 
some one of the band of nobles who had so long held Pome 
in fee. It is very likely that Eienzi had no ambitious 
motive, nor thought of a new revolution when he set out. 
He took part like the rest of the Cardinal's following in 
several of the expeditions, especially against his old enemy 
Giovanni di Vico, still as masterful and. as dangerous as 
ever, but attempted nothing more. 

1 An amusing story used to be told in Rome concerning this place, 
which no doubt sprang from the legend of that old ecclesiastical inhab- 
itation. It was that a bishop, travelling across the country (it is always 
a bishop who is the bon vivant of Italian story) , sent a messenger before 
him with instructions to write on the wall of every town his opinion of 
the wine of the place, that his master might judge whether he should 
alight there or not. If it was good Est was to be the word. When the 
courier came to Montefiascone he was so delighted with the vintage 
there that he emblazoned the gate with a triple legend of Est, Est, 
Est. The bishop arrived, alighted ; and never left Montefiascone 
more. The wine in its native flasks is still distinguished by this 
inscription. 



tf5J 













1 s *" '.,.•1' 






a--^ 



"4, 
^4 



-3^^ 0^x*k~. ^e^Ao. 



THE BORGHESE GABDENS. 



CHAPTER V. 



THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE. 

THE short episode which here follows introduces an 
entirely new element into Rienzi's life. His nature 
was not that of a consrnrator in the ordinary sense of the 
word ; and though he had schemed and struggled much to 
return to Rome, it had lately been under the shield of Pope 
or Emperor, and never with any evident purpose of self- 
aggrandisement. But the wars which were continually rag- 
ing in Italy, and in which every man's hand was against his 
neighbour's, had raised up a new agent in the much con- 
tested field, by whose aid, more than by that of either Pope 
or Emperor, principalities rose and fell, and great fortunes 
were made and lost. This was the singular institution of 

486 



ch. v.] THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE. 487 

the Soldier of Fortune, the Free Lance, whose bands, with- 
out country, without object except pay and some vulgar 
version of fame, without creed or nationality or scruples of 
any kind, roamed over Europe, ready to adopt any cause 
or throw their weight on any side, and furnishing the very 
material that was necessary to carry on those perpetual 
struggles, which kept Italy in particular, and most other 
countries more or less, in constant commotion. These men 
took service with the utmost impartiality on whatever side 
was likely to give them the highest pay, or the best oppor- 
tunity of acquiring wealth — their leaders occasionally pos- 
sessing themselves of the lordship of a rich territory, the 
inferior captains falling into lesser fiefs and windfalls of all 
kinds, the merest man-at-arms apt to enrich himself, either 
by the terror he inspired, or the protection he could give. 
It was their existence indeed, it may almost be said, that 
made these endless wars, which were so generally without 
motive, demonstrations of vanity of one city against another, 
or attempts on the part of one to destroy the liberties and 
trade of another, which, had they been carried on by the 
citizens themselves, must have in the long run brought all 
human affairs to a deadlock, and become impossible : but 
which, when carried on through the agency of the merce- 
naries, were little more than an exciting game, more exciting 
than any Kriegsspiel that has been invented since. The men 
were themselves moving castles, almost impregnable, more 
apt to be suffocated in their armour than killed in honest 
fight, and as a matter of fact their campaigns were singu- 
larly bloodless ; but they were like the locusts, the scourge 
of the country, leaving nothing but destruction and rapine 
behind them wherever they moved. The dreadful army 
known as La Grande Compagnia, of which Fra Moreale (the 
Chevalier de Monreal, but always bearing this name in Italy) 
was the head, was at this time pervading Italy — everywhere 
feared, everywhere sought, the cruel and terrible chief being 



488 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

at the same time a romantic and high born personage, a 
Knight Hospitaller, the equal of the great Seigneurs whom 
he served, and ready to be himself some time a great Sei- 
gneur too, the head of the first principality which he should 
be strong enough to lay hold of, as the Sforza had done of 
Milan. The services of such a man were of course a never- 
failing resource and temptation to every adventurer or pre- 
tender who could afford to procure the money to pay for 
them. 

There is no proof that Eienzi had any plan of securing 
the dominion of Roine by such means ; indeed his practice, 
as will be seen, leads to the contrary conclusion; but the 
transaction to which he became a party while he was in 
Perugia — under the orders of Cardinal Albornoz — shows 
that he was, for the moment at least, attracted by the 
strange possibilities put within his reach : as it also demon- 
strates the strangely business-like character and trade aspect 
of an agency so warlike and romantic. At Perugia and 
other towns through which he passed, the Tribune was 
recognised and everywhere followed by the Romans, who 
were to be found throughout the Patrimony, and who had 
but one entreaty to make to him. The chronicler recovers 
all his wonted energy when he resumes his narrative, leav- 
ing with delight the dull conflicts of the Roman nobles 
among themselves, and with the Legate vainly attempting 
to pacify and negotiate between them — for the living figure 
of the returned leader, and the eager populace who hailed 
him again, as their deliverer, as if it had been others and 
not themselves who had driven him away ! Even in Monte- 
fiascone our biographer tells, there was such recourse of 
Eomans to him that it was stupore, stupefying, to see them. 

" Every Roman turned to him, and multitudes visited him. A 
great tail of the populace followed him wherever he went. Every- 
body marvelled, including the Legate, to see how he was followed. 
After the destruction of Viterbo, when the army returned, many 
Romans who were in it, some of them important men, came to Rienzi. 



v.] THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE. 489 

They said, ' Return to thy Rome, cure her of her sickness. Be her 
lord. We will give thee help, favour, and strength. Be in no doubt. 
Never were you so much desired or so much loved as at present. ' These 
flatteries the Romans gave him, hut they did not give him a penny of 
money : their words however moved Cola di Rienzi, and also the glory 
of it, for which he always thirsted by nature, and he began to think 
what he could do to make a foundation, and where he would find people 
and money to go to Rome. He talked of it with the Legate, but neither 
did he supply him with any money. R had been settled that the people 
of Perugia should make a provision for him, giving him enough to live 
upon honourably ; but that was not sufficient for raising an army. And 
for this reason he went to Perugia and met the Counsellors there. He 
spoke well and promised better, and the Counsellors were very eager 
to hear the sweetness of his words, to which they lent an attentive ear. 
These they licked up like honey. But they were responsible for the 
goods of the commune, and not one penny (Cortonese) could he obtain 
from them. 

" At this time there were in Perugia two young gentlemen of Pro- 
vence, Messer Arimbaldo, doctor of laws, and Messer Bettrom, the 
knight of Narba (Narbonne), in Provence, brothers ; who were also 
the brothers of the famous Fra Moreale, who was at the head of La 
Grande Compagnia. ... He had acquired much wealth by robbery 
and booty, and compelled the Commune of Perugia to provide for his 
brothers who were there. When Cola di Rienzi heard that Messer 
Arimbaldo of Narba, a young man who loved letters, was in Perugia, 
he invited him to visit him, and would have him dine at his hostel 
where he was. While they were at table Cola di Rienzi began to talk 
of the greatness of the Romans. He mingled stories of Titus Livius 
with things from the Bible. He opened the fountain of his knowledge. 
Deh ! how he talked — all his strength he put into his reasoning ; and 
so much to the point did he speak that every man was overwhelmed 
by such wonderful conversation ; every one rose to his feet, put his 
hand to his ear, and listened in silence. Messer Arimbaldo was aston- 
ished by these fine speeches. He admired the greatness of the Romans. 
The warmth of the wine raised his spirit to the heights. The fantastic 
understand the fantastic. Messer Arimbaldo could not endure to be 
absent from Cola di Rienzi. He lived with him, he walked with him ; 
one meal they shared, and slept in one bed. He dreamt of doing great 
things, of raising up Rome, of restoring its ancient state. To do this 
money was wanted — three thousand florins at least. He pledged him- 
self to procure the three thousand florins, and it was promised to him 
that he should be made a citizen of Rome and captain, and be much 
honoured, all which was arranged to the great despite of his brother 
Messer Bettrom. Therefore, Arimbaldo took from the merchants of 
Perugia four thousand florins, to give them to Cola di Rienzi. But before 
Messer Arimbaldo could give this money to Cola, he had to ask leave 
of his elder brother, Fra Moreale, which he did, sending him a letter 
in these words : ' Honoured brother, — I have gained in one day more 
than you have done in all your life. I have acquired the lordship of 
Rome, which is promised to me by Messer Cola di Rienzi, Knight, 
Tribune, who is much visited by the Romans and called by the people. 



490 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

I believe that such a plan cannot fail. With the help of your genius 
nothing could injure such a great State ; but money is wanted to begin 
with. If it pleases your brotherly kindness, I am taking four thousand 
florins from the bank, and with a strong armament am setting out for 
Rome.' Fra Moreale read this letter and replied to it as follows : 

'"I have thought much of this work which you intend to do. A 
great and weighty burden is this which you take upon you. I do not 
understand your intention ; my mind does not go with it, my reason is 
against it. Nevertheless go on, and do it well. In the first place, take 
great care that the four thousand florins are not lost. If anything evil 
happen to you, write to me. I will come to your help with a thousand 
or two thousand men, and do the thing magnificently. Therefore do 
not fear. See that you and your brother love each other, honour each 
other, and make no quarrel between you.' 

" Messer Arimbaldo received this letter with much joy, and arranged 
with the Tribune to set out for Rome." 

Fra Moreale was a good brother and a far-seeing chief. 
He saw that the Signoria of Rome, if it could be attained, 
would be a good investment for his four thousand florins, 
and probably that Cola di Rienzi was an instrument which 
could easily be thrown away when it had fulfilled its end, so 
that it was worth while letting young Arimbaldo have his 
way. No prevision of the tragedy that was to come, troubled 
the spirit of the great brigand. He would no doubt have 
laughed at the suggestion, that his young brother's eloquent 
demagogue, the bel dicitore, a character always disdained of 
fighting men, could do him, with all his martial followers 
behind him, and his money in the bank, any harm. 

The first thing that Rienzi did we are told, was to clothe 
himself gloriously in scarlet, furred with minever and em- 
broidered with gold, in which garb he appeared before 
the Legate who had heretofore known him only in a sober 
suit of ordinary cloth — accompanied by the two brothers 
of Moreale and a train of attendants. There had been a 
report of more disorder than usual in Rome, a condition 
of things with which a recently appointed Senator, ap- 
pointed as a stranger to keep the factions in order, was 
quite unable to cope : and there was therefore a certain 
reason in the request, when the Tribune in all his new 



v.] THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE. 491 

finery, came into the presence of the Legate, although he 
asked, no less than to be made Senator, undertaking, at the 
same time, to secure the peace of the turbulent city. The 
biographer gives a vivid picture of Rienzi in his sudden 
revival. " Splendidly he displayed himself with his scar- 
let hood on his shoulders, and scarlet mantle adorned with 
various furs. He moved his head back and forward, raising 
himself on his toes, as who would say ' Who am I ? — I, who 
may I be ? ' " The Legate as usual was " stupefied " by 
this splendid apparition, but gave serious ear to his request, 
no doubt knowing the reality of his pretensions so far as 
the Koman people were concerned. He finally agreed to do 
what was required of him, no doubt like Fra Moreale, con- 
fident that the instrument, especially being so vain and 
slight a man as this, could easily be got rid of when he had 
served his turn. 

Accordingly, with all the strength he could muster — a 
troop of 250 free lances, Germans and Burgundians, the 
same number of infantry from Tuscany, with fifty young 
men of good families in Perugia — a very tolerable army 
for the time — and the two young Provengals, along with 
other youths to whom he had promised various offices, the 
new Senator set out for Eome. He was now a legal official, 
with all the strength of the Pope and constituted authority 
behind him; not a penny of money it is true from the 
Legate, and only those four thousand florins in his treasury : 
but with all the taxes and offerings in Rome in front of him, 
and the highest promise of success. It was a very different 
beginning from that of seven years ago, when young, penni- 
less, disinterested, with no grandeur to keep up, and no 
soldiers to pay, he had been borne by the shouting populace 
to the Capitol to an unlimited and impossible empire. He 
was now a sober man, experienced in the world, forty, and 
trained by the intercourse of courts, in other ways than 
those of his youth. He had now been taught how to scheme 



492 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [ch. v. 

and plot, to cajole and natter, to play one party against 
another, and change his plans to suit his circumstances. So 
far as we know, he had no motive that could be called 
bad, except that of achieving the splendour he loved, and 
surrounding himself with the paraphernalia of greatness. 
The devil surely never before used so small a bribe to cor- 
rupt a nature full of so many fine things. He meant to 
establish the Buono Stato, probably as sincerely as of old. 
He had learned that he could not put forth the same un- 
limited pretensions. The making of emperors and sway of 
the world had to be resigned ; but there is no evidence that 
he did not mean to carry out in his new reign the high 
designs for his city, and for the peace and prosperity of the 
surrounding country, which he had so triumphantly suc- 
ceeded in doing for that one happy and triumphant moment 
in his youth. 



r~\ 




¥§^^L~h 










TOMB OF CECILIA MBTELLA 



CHAPTER VI. 






THE END OF THE TRAGEDY. 

IT was in the beginning of August 1354 that Eienzi re- 
turned to Rome. Great preparations had been made 
for his reception. The municipal guards, with all the cav- 
alry that were in Rome, went out as far as Monte Mario to 
meet him, with branches of olive in their hands, " in sign of 
victory and peace. The people were as joyful as if he had 
been Scipio Africanus," our biographer says. He came in 
by the gate of the Castello, near St. Angelo, and went 
thence direct to the centre of the city, through streets 
adorned with triumphal arches, hung with tapestry, resound- 
ing with acclamations. 

493 



494 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

" Great was the delight and fervour of the people. With all these 
honours they led him to the Palazzo of the Capitoi. There he made 
them a beautiful and eloquent speech, in which he said that for seven 
years he had been absent from his house, like Nebuchadnezzar ; but 
by the power of God he had returned to his seat and was Senator by 
the appointment of the Pope. He added that he meant to rectify 
everything and raise up the condition of Rome. The rejoicing of the 
Romans was as great as was that of the Jews when Jesus Christ 
entered Jerusalem riding upon an ass. They all honoured him, hang- 
ing out draperies and olive branches, and singing ' Blessed is he that 
cometh.' When all was over they returned to their homes and left 
him alone with his followers in the Piazza. No one offered him so 
much as a poor repast. The following day Cola di Rienzi received 
several ambassadors from the surrounding country. Deh ! how well 
he answered. He gave replies and promises on every side. The 
barons remained on the watch, taking no part. The tumult of the 
triumph was great. Never had there been so much pomp. The in- 
fantry lined the streets. It seemed as if he meant to govern in the 
way of the tyrants. Most of the goods he had forfeited were restored 
to him. He sent out letters to all the States to declare his happy 
return, and he desired that every one should prepare for the Buono 
Stato. This man was greatly changed from his former ways. It had 
been his habit to be sober, temperate, abstinent. Now he became an 
excessive drinker, and consumed much wine. And he became large 
and gross in his person. He had a paunch like a tun, triumphal, like 
an Abbate Asinico. He was full of flesh, red, with a long beard. 
His countenance was changed, his eyes were as if they were inflamed 
— sometimes they were red as blood." 

This uncompromising picture of a man whom adversity 
had not improved but deteriorated, is very broad and 
coarse with those personalities which the mob loves. Yet 
his biographer does not seem to have been hostile to 
Rienzi. He goes on to describe how the new senator on the 
fourth day after his arrival sent a summons to all the barons 
to present themselves before him, and among others he sum- 
moned Stefanello Colonna who had been a child at the time 
of the dreadful rout of San Lorenzo, but was now head of 
the house, his noble old heart-broken grandfather being by 
this time happily dead. It was scarcely likely that the 
third Stefano should receive that summons in friendship. 
He seized the two messengers and threw them into prison, 
then after a time had the teeth of one drawn, an insulting 
infliction, and despatched the other to Eome to demand a 



vr.] THE END OF THE TRAGEDY. 495 

ransom for thern : following this up by a great raid upon 
the surrounding country, in which his lightly armed and 
flying forces " lifted " the cattle of the Romans as might 
have been done by the emissaries of a Highland chief. 
Bienzi seems to have rushed to arms, collecting a great mis- 
cellaneous gathering, " some armed, some without arms, ac- 
cording as time permitted " to recover the cattle. But they 
were misled by an artifice of the most transparent descrip- 
tion, and stumbled on as far as Tivoli without finding any 
opponent. Here he was stopped by the mercenaries clam- 
ouring for their pay, which he adroitly obtained from the 
two young commanders, Arimbaldo and Bettrom, by repre- 
senting to them that when such a difficulty arose in classi- 
cal times it was met by the chief citizens who immediately 
subscribed what was necessary. The apparently simple- 
minded young men (Bettrom or Bertram having apparently 
got over his ill-temper) gave him 500 florins each, and so 
the trouble was got over for the moment, and the march 
towards Palestrina was resumed. But the expedition was 
quite futile, neither Bienzi nor the young men whom he 
had placed at the head of affairs knowing much about the 
science of war. There were dissensions in the camp, the 
men of Velletri having a feud with those of Tivoli ; and 
the picture which the biographer affords us of the leaders 
looking on, seeing a train of cattle and provision waggons 
entering the town which they were by way of besieging, 
and inquiring innocently what it was, gives the most vivid 
impression of the ignorance and helplessness which reigned 
in the attacking party : while Stefanello Colonna, to the 
manner born, surrounded by old warriors and fighting for 
his life, defended his -old towers with skill as well as 
desperation. 

While the Bomans thus lost their chances of victory 
and occupied themselves with that destruction of the sur- 
rounding country, which was the first word of warfare in 



496 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

those days — the peasants and the villages always suffer- 
ing, whoever might escape — there was news brought to 
Eienzi's camp of the arrival in Kome of the terrible Era 
Moreale himself, who had arrived in all confidence, with 
but a small party in his train, in the city for which his 
brothers were fighting and in which his money formed the 
only treasury of war. He was a bold man and used to 
danger ; but it did not seem that any idea of danger had 
occurred to him. There had been whispers among the 
mercenaries that the great Captain entertained no amiable 
feelings towards the Senator who had beguiled his young 
brothers into this dubious warfare : and this report would 
seem to have come to Eienzi's ears : but that Era Moreale 
stood in any danger from Eienzi does not seem to have 
occurred to any spectator. 

One pauses here with a wondering inquiry what were his 
motives at this crisis of his life. Were they simply those 
of the ordinary and vulgar villain, ''Let us kill him that 
the inheritance may be ours " ? — was he terrified by the 
prospect of the inquiries which the experienced man of 
war would certainly make as to the manner in which his 
brothers had been treated by the leader who had attained 
such absolute power over them ? or is it possible that the 
patriotism, the enthusiasm for Italy, the high regard for 
the common weal which had once existed in the bosom of 
Cola di Eienzi flashed up now in his mind, in one last and 
tremendous flame of righteous wrath ? No one perhaps 
so dangerous to the permanent freedom and well-being of 
Italy existed as this Erovenqal with his great army, which 
held allegiance to no leader but himself — without country, 
without creed or scruple — which he led about at his pleas- 
ure, flinging it now into one, now into the other scale. 
The Grande Compagnia was the terror of the whole Conti- 
nent. Except that it was certain to bring disaster wherever 
it went, its movements were never to be calculated upon. 



vi.] THE END OF THE TRAGEDY. 497 

Whatever fluctuations there might be in state or city, this 
roving army was always on the side of evil ; it lived by 
fighting and disaster alone; and to drive it out of the 
country, out of the world if possible, would have been the 
most true and noble act of deliverance which could have 
been accomplished. Was this the purpose that flashed 
into Rienzi's eyes when he heard that the head of this 
terror, the great brigand chief and captain, had trusted 
himself within the walls of Eome ? With the philosophy 
of compromise which rules among us, and which forbids 
us to allow an uncomplicated motive in any man, we dare 
hardly say or even surmise that this was so ; but we may 
allow some room for the mingled motives which are the 
pet theory of our age, and yet believe that something per- 
haps of this nobler impulse was in the mind of the Roman 
Senator, who, notwithstanding his decadence and his down- 
fall, was still the same man who by sheer enthusiasm and 
generous wrath, without a blow struck, had once driven its 
petty tyrants out of the city. Whatever may be the judg- 
ment of the reader in this respect, it is clear that Rienzi 
dropped the siege of Palestrina when he heard of Fra 
Moreale's arrival, as a dog drops a bone or an infant his 
toys, and hastened to Rome ; while his army melted away 
as was usual in such wars, each band to its own country. 
Eight days had been passed before Palestrina, and the 
country round was completely devastated : but no effectual 
advantage had been gained when this sudden change of 
purpose took place. 

As soon as Rienzi arrived in Rome he caused Fra Moreale 
to be arrested, and placed him with his brothers in the prison 
of the Capitol, to the great astonishment of all; but espe- 
cially to the surprise of the great Captain, who thought it 
at first a mere expedient for extorting money, and comforted 
by this explanation the unfortunate brothers for whose sake 
he had placed himself in the snare. " Do not trouble your- 



498 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

selves," lie said, " let me manage this affair. He shall have 
ten thousand, twenty thousand florins, money and people as 
much as he pleases." Then answered the brothers, " Deh ! 
do so, in the name of God." They perhaps knew their 
Rienzi by this time, young as they were, and foolish as they 
had been, better than their elder and superior. And no 
doubt Rienzi might have made excellent terms for himself, 
perhaps even for Rome ; but he does not seem to have enter- 
tained such an idea for a moment. When the Tribune set 
his foot within the gates of the city the Condottiere's fate 
was sealed. The biographer gives us a most curious picture 
of the agitation and surprise of this man in face of his fate. 
When he was brought to the torture (menato a lo tormento) 
he cried out in a consternation which is wild with foregone 
conclusions. " I told you what your rustic villain was," he 
exclaimed, as if still carrying on that discussion with the 
foolish young brothers. " He is going to put me to the tor- 
ment ! Does he not know that I am a knight ? Was there 
ever such a clown ? " Thus storming, astonished, incredu- 
lous of such a possibility, yet eager to say that he had fore- 
seen it, the dismayed Captain was alzato, pulled up presum- 
ably by his hands as was one manner of torture, all the time 
murmuring and crying in his beard, half-mad and incoherent 
in the unexpected catastrophe. "I am Captain of the Great 
Company," he cried ; " and being a knight I ought to be 
Honoured. I have put the cities of Tuscany to ransom. I 
have laid taxes on them. I have overthrown principalities 
and taken the people captive." While he babbled thus in 
his first agony of astonishment the shadow of death closed 
upon Moreale, and the character of his utterances changed. 
He began to perceive that it was all real, and that Rienzi 
had now gone too far to be won by money or promises. 
When he was taken back to the prison which his brothers 
shared he told them with more dignity, that he knew he 
was about to die. " Gentle brothers, be not afraid," he said. 



vi.] THE END OF THE TRAGEDY. 499 

" You are young ; you have not felt misfortune. You shall 
not die, but I shall die. My life has always been full of 
trouble." (He was a man of sentiment, and a poet in his 
way, as well as a soldier of fortune.) ."It was a trouble to 
me to live, of death I have no fear. I am glad to die where 
died the blessed St. Peter and St. Paul. This misadventure 
is thy fault, Arimbaldo ; it is you who have led me into this 
labyrinth ; but do not blame yourself or mourn for me, for 
I die willingly. I am a man : I have been betrayed like 
other men. By heaven, I was deceived ! But God will 
have mercy upon me, I have no doubt, because I came here 
with a good intention." These piteous words, full to the 
last of astonishment, form a sort of soliloquy which runs 
on, broken, to the very foot of the Lion upon the great 
stairs, where he was led to die, amid the stormy ringing of 
the great bell and rushing of the people, half exultant and 
half terrified, who came from all quarters to see this great 
and terrible act of that justice to which the city in her first 
fervour had pledged herself. "Oh, Romans, are ye consent- 
ing to my death ? " he cried. " I never did you harm ; but 
because of your poverty and my wealth I must die." The 
chronicler goes on reporting the last words with fascination, 
as if he could not refrain. There is a wildness in them, 
of wonder and amazement, to the last moment. " I am not 
well placed," he murmured, non sto bene, evidently meaning, 
I am not properly placed for the blow : as he seems to have 
changed his position several times, kneeling down and rising 
again. He then kissed the knife and said, " God save thee, 
holy justice," and making another round knelt down again. 
The narrative is full of life and pity ; the great soldier all 
bewildered, his brain failing, overwhelmed with dolorous 
surprise, seeking the right spot to die in. " This excellent 
man (lionestis probisque viris, in the Latin version), Era 
Moreale, whose fame is in all Italy for strength and glory, 
was buried in the Church of the Ara Cceli," says our chroni- 



500 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

cler. His execution took place on the spot where the Lion 
still stands on the left hand of the great stairs. There Fra 
Moreale wandered in his distraction to find a comfortable 
place for the last blow. The association is grim enough, 
and others yet more appalling were soon to gather there. 

This perhaps was the only step of his life in which Rienzi 
had the approbation of all. The Pope displayed his approval 
in the most practical way by confiscating all Fra Moreale' s 
wealth, of which 60,000 gold florins were distributed among 
those who had suffered by him. The funds which he had 
in various cities were also seized, though we are told that 
of those in Eome Rienzi had but a small part, a certain 
notary having managed, by what means we are not told, to 
secure the larger sum. By the interposition of the Legate, 
the foolish Arimbaldo, whom Rienzi's fair words had so bit- 
terly deceived, was discharged from his prison and permitted 
to leave Rome, but the younger brother Bettrom, or Bertram, 
who, so far as we see, was never a partisan of Rienzi, was 
left behind ; and though his presence is noted at another 
tragic moment, we do not hear what became of him eventu- 
ally. With the money he received Rienzi made haste to pay 
his soldiers and to renew the war. He was so fortunate as 
to secure the services of a noble and valiant captain, of 
whom the free lances declared that they had never served 
under so brave a man: and whose name is recorded as 
Riccardo Imprennante degli Annibaldi — Richard the enter- 
prising, perhaps — and the war was pursued with vigour 
under him. Within Rome things did not go quite so well. 
Rienzi had to explain his conduct in respect to Fra Moreale 
to his own councillors. " Sirs," he said, " do not be disturbed 
by the death of this man; he was the worst man in the 
world. He has robbed churches and towns ; he has mur- 
dered both men and women ; two thousand depraved women 
followed him about. He came to disturb our state, not to 
help it, meaning to make himself the lord of it. And this 



vi.] THE END OF THE TRAGEDY. 501 

is why we have condemned that false man. His money, his 
horses, and his arms we shall take for our soldiers." We 
scarcely see the eloquence for which Rienzi was famed in 
these succinct . and staccato sentences in which his biog- 
rapher reports him ; but this was our chronicler's own 
style, and they are at least vigorous and to the point. 

" By these words the Romans were partly quieted," we 
are told, and the course of the history went on. The siege 
of Palestrina went well, and garrisons were placed in sev- 
eral of the surrounding towns, while Rienzi held the control 
of everything in his hands. Some of his troops withdrew 
from his service, probably because of Era Moreale ; but 
others came — archers in great numbers, and three hundred 
horsemen. 

' ' He maintained his place at the Capitol in order to provide for 
everything. Many were the cares. He had to procure money to pay 
the soldiers. He restricted himself in every expense ; every penny 
was for the army. Such a man was never seen ; alone he bore the 
cares of all the Eomans. He stood in the Capitol arranging that 
which the leaders in their places afterwards carried out. He gave the 
orders and settled everything, and it was done — the closing of the 
roads, the times of attack, the taking of men and spies. It was never 
ending. His officers were neither slow nor cold, but no one did much 
except the hero Tticcardo, who night and day weakened the Colonnese. 
Stefanello and his Colonnas, and Palestrina consumed away. The 
war was coming to a good end." 

To do all this, however, the money of Moreale was not 
enough. Rienzi had to impose a tax upon wine, and to 
raise that upon salt, which the citizens resented. Every- 
thing was for the soldiers. His own expenses were much 
restricted, and he seemed to expect that the citizens would 
follow his example. One of them, a certain Pandolf uccio di 
Guido, Rienzi seized and' beheaded without any apparent 
reason. He was said to have desired to make himself lord 
over the people, the chronicler says. This arbitrary step 
seems to have caused great alarm. " The Romans were like 
sheep, and they were afraid of the Tribune as of a demon." 



502 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

By this time Rienzi once more began to show signs of 
that confusion of mind which we call losing the head — a 
confusion of irritation and changeableness, the resolution 
of to-day giving place to another to-morrow — and the giddi- 
ness of approaching downfall seized upon every faculty. As 
had happened on the former occasion, this dizziness of doom 
caught him when all was going well. He displaced his 
Captain, who was carrying on the siege of Palestrina with 
so much vigour and success, for no apparent reason, and 
appointed other leaders whose names even the biographer 
does not think it worth while to give. The National Guard 

— if we may so call them — fifty for each Rione — who 
were the sole guardians of Rome, were kept without pay, 
while every penny that could be squeezed from the people 
was sent to the army. These things raised each a new 
enemy to the Tribune, the Senator, once so beloved, who 
now for the second time, and more completely than before, 
had proved himself incapable of the task which he had 
taken upon him. It was on the 1st of August, 1354, that 
he had entered Rome with a rejoicing escort of all its 
cavalry and principal inhabitants — with waving flags and 
olive branches, and a throng that filled all the streets, the 
Popolo itself shouting and acclaiming — and had been led 
to the Piazza of the Ara Coeli, at the foot of the great stairs 
of the Capitol. On the last day of that month, a sinister 
and tragic assembly, gathered together by the sound of the 
great bell, thronged once more to the foot of these stairs, to 
see the great soldier, the robber knight, the terror of Italy, 
executed. And it was still only September, the Vita says 

— though other accounts throw the catastrophe a month 
later — when the last day of Rienzi himself came. We 
know nothing of the immediate causes of the rising, nor 
who were its leaders. But Rome was in so parlous a state, 
seething with so many volcanic elements, that it must have 
been impossible to predict from morning to morning what 




ANCIENT, MEDIEVAL, AND MODERN ROME. 



To face page 502. 



vi.] THE END OF THE TRAGEDY. 505 

might happen. What did happen looks like a sudden out- 
burst, spontaneous and unpremeditated ; but no doubt, from 
various circumstances which followed, the Colonna had a 
hand in it, who ever since the day of San Lorenzo had been 
Cola's bitterest enemies. This is how his biographer tells 
the tale : 

' ' It was the month of September, the eighth day. In the morning 
Cola di Rienzi lay in his bed, having washed his face with Greek wine 
(no doubt a reference to his supposed habits). Suddenly voices were 
heard shouting Viva lo Popolo ! Viva lo Popolo ! At this sound the 
people in the streets began to run here and there. The sound increased, 
the crowd grew. At the cross in the market they were joined by armed 
men who came from St. Angelo and the Ripa, and from the Colonna 
quarter and the Trevi. As they joined, their cry was changed into this, 
Death to the traitor, Cola di Rienzi, death ! Among them appeared the 
youths who had been put in his lists for the conscription. They rushed 
towards the palace of the Capitol with an innumerable throng of men, 
women and children, throwing stones, making a great clamour, encir- 
cling the palace on every side before and behind, and shouting, ' Death 
to the traitor who has inflicted the taxes ! Death to him ! ' Terrible 
was the fury of them. The Tribune made no defence against them. 
He did not sound the tocsin. He said to himself, ' They cry Viva lo 
Popolo, and so do we. We are here to exalt the people. I have written 
to my soldiers. My letter of confirmation has come from the Pope. 
All that is wanted is to publish it in the Council.' But when he saw 
at the last that the thing was turning badly he began to be alarmed, 
especially as he perceived that he was abandoned by every living soul 
of those who usually occupied the Capitol. Judges, notaries, guards — 
all had fled to save their own skin. Only three persons remained with 
him — one of whom was Locciolo Pelliciaro, his kinsman." 

This was the terrible awaking of the doomed man — 
without preparation, without the sound of a bell, or any 
of the usual warnings, roused from his day-dream of idle 
thoughts, his Greek wine, the indulgences to which he 
had accustomed himself, in his vain self-confidence. He 
had no home on the heights of that Capitol to which he had 
returned with such triumph. If his son Lorenzo was dead 
or living we do not hear. His wife had entered one of the 
convents of the Poor Clares, when he was wandering in the 
Apennines, and was far from him. There is not a word of 
any one who loved him, unless it might chance to be the 



506 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

poor relation who stood by him, Locciolo, the furrier, per- 
haps kept about him to look after his robes of minever, the 
royal fur. The cry that now surged round the ill-secured 
and half-ruinous palace would seem to have been indistin- 
guishable to him, even when the hoarse roar came so near, 
like the dashing of a horrible wave round the walls : Viva 
lo Popolo ! that was one thing. With his belle parole he 
could have easily turned that to his advantage, shouting it 
too. What else was he there for but to glorify the people ? 
But the terrible thunder of sound took another tone, a 
longer cry, requiring a deeper breath — Death to the traitor : 
— these are not words a man can long mistake. Something 
had to be done — he knew not what. In that equality of 
misery which makes a man acquainted with such strange 
bedfellows, the Senator turned to the three humble retainers 
who trembled round him, and asked their advice. " By my 
faith, the thing cannot go like this," he said. It would 
appear that some one advised him to face the crowd : for he 
dressed himself in his costume as a knight, took the banner 
of the peoj)le in his hand, and went out upon the balcony : 

" He extended his hand, making a sign that all were to be silent, and 
that he was about to speak. Without doubt if they had listened to him 
he would have broken their will and changed their opinion. But the 
Romans would not listen ; they were as swine ; they threw stones and 
aimed arrows at him, and some ran with fire to set light to the door. 
So many were the arrows shot at him that he could not remain on the 
balcony. Then he took the Gonfalone and spread out the standard, 
and with both his hands pointed to the letters of gold, the arms of the 
citizens of Rome — almost as if he said ' You will not let me speak ; 
but I am a citizen and a man of the people like you. I love you ; and 
if you kill me, you will kill yourselves who are Romans.' But he 
could not continue in this position, for the people, without intellect, 
grew worse and worse. ' Death to the traitor,' they cried." 

A great confusion was in the mind of the unfortunate 
Tribune. He could no longer keep his place in the balcony, 
and the rioters had set fire to the great door below, which 
began to burn. If he escaped into the room above, it was 
the prison of Bertram of Narbonne, the brother of Moreale, 



vi.] THE END OF THE TRAGEDY. 507 

who "would have killed him. In this dreadful strait Eienzi 
had himself let down by sheets knotted together into the 
court behind, encircled by the walls of the prison. Even 
here treachery pursued him, for Locciolo, his kinsman, ran 
out to the balcony, and with signs and cries informed the 
crowd that he had gone away behind, and was escaping by 
the other side. He it was, says the chronicler, who killed 
Eienzi ; for he first aided him in his descent and then be- 
trayed him. For one desperate moment of indecision the 
fallen Tribune held a last discussion with himself in the 
court of the prison. Should he still go forth in his knight's 
dress, armed and with his sword in his hand, and die there 
with dignity, " like a magnificent person," in the sight of 
all men ? But life was still sweet. He threw off his sur- 
coat, cut his beard and begrimed his face — then going into 
the porter's lodge, he found a peasant's coat which he put 
on, and seizing a covering from the bed, threw it over him, 
as if the pillage of the Palazzo had begun, and sallied forth. 
He struggled through the burning as best he could, and 
came through it untouched by the fire, speaking like a coun- 
tryman, and crying "Up! Up! a glut, traditore! As he 
passed the last door one of the crowd accosted him roughly, 
and pushed back the article on his head, which would seem to 
have been a duvet, or heavy quilt : upon which the splen- 
dour of the bracelet he wore on his wrist became visible, and 
he was recognised. He was immediately seized, not with 
any violence at first, and taken down the great stair to the 
foot of the Lion, where the sentences were usually read. 
When he reached that spot, " a silence was made " (Jo fatto 
uno silentio). "No man," says the chronicler, " showed any 
desire to touch him. He stood there for about an hour, his 
beard cut, his face black like a furnace-man, in a tunic of 
green silk, and yellow hose like a baron." In the silence, 
as he stood there, during that awful hour, he turned his 
head from side to side, " looking here and there." He does 



508 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

not seem to have made any attempt to speak, but bewildered 
in the collapse of his being, pitifully contemplated the horri- 
ble crowd, glaring at him, no man daring to strike the first 
blow. At last a follower of his own, one of the leaders of 
the mob, made a thrust with his sword — and immediately 
a dozen others followed. He died at the first stroke, his 
biographer tells us, and felt no pain. The whole dreadful 
scene passed in silence — " not a word was said," the piteous, 
eager head, looking here and there, fell, and all was over. 
And the roar of the dreadful crowd burst forth again. 

The still more horrible details that follow need not be 
here given. The unfortunate had grown fat in the luxury 
of these latter days. Grasso era Jwrriblimente. Bianco 
come latte ensanguinato, says the chronicler : and again he 
places before us, as at San Lorenzo seven years before, the 
white figure lying on the pavement, the red of the blood. 
It was dragged along the streets to the Colonna quarter ; it 
was hung up to a balcony ; finally the headless body, after 
all these dishonours, was taken to an open place before the 
Mausoleum of Augustus, and burned by the Jews. Why 
the Jews took this share of the carnival of blood we are not 
told. It had never been said that Eienzi was hard upon 
them ; but no doubt at a period so penniless they must have 
had their full share of the taxes and payments exacted 
from all. 

There is no moral even, to this tale, except the well-worn 
moral of the fickleness of the populace who acclaim a leader 
one moment, and kill him the next ; but that is a common- 
place and a worn-out one. If there were ever many men 
likely to sin in that way, it might be a lesson to the enthusiast 
thrusting an inexperienced hand into the web of fate, to 
confuse the threads with which the destiny of a country is 
wrought, without knowing either the pattern or the meaning 
of the weaving. He began with what we have every reason 
for believing to have been a noble and generous impulse to 



vi.] THE END OF THE TRAGEDY. 509 

save his people. But his soul was uot capable of that high 
emprise. He had the greatest aud most immediate success 
ever given to a popular leader. The power to change, to 
mend, to make over again, to vindicate and to carry out his 
ideal was given him in the fullest measure. For a time it 
seemed that there was nothing in the world that Cola di 
Eienzi, the son of the wine-shop, the child of the people, 
might not do. But then he fell ; the promise faded into dead 
ashes, the impulse which was inspiration breathed out and 
died away. Inspiration was all he had, neither knowledge 
nor the noble sense and understanding which might have been 
a substitute for it ; and when the thin fire blazed up like the 
crackling of thorns under a pot, it blazed away again and left 
nothing behind. Had he perished at the end of his first 
reign, had he been slain at the foot of the Capitol, as Petrarch 
would have had him, his story would have been a perfect 
tragedy, and we might have been permitted to make a hero 
of the young patriot, standing alone, in an age to which 
patriotism was unknown. But the postscript of his second 
effort destroys the epic. It is all miserable self-seeking, all 
squalid, the story of any beggar on horseback, any vulgar 
adventurer. Yet the silent hour when he stood at the foot 
of the great stairs, the horrible mob silent before him, bridled 
by that mute and awful despair, incapable of striking the 
final blow, is one of the most intense moments of human 
tragedy. A large overgrown man, with blackened face and 
the rough remnants of a beard, half dressed, speechless, his 
head turning here and there — And yet no one dared to 
take that step, to thrust that eager sword, for nearly an 
hour. Perhaps it was only a minute, which would be less 
unaccountable, feeling like an hour to every looker on who 
was there and stood by. 

No one in all the course of modern Boman history has so 
illustrated the streets and ways of Borne and set its excited 
throngs in evidence, and made the great bell sound in our 



510 



THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [ch. vi. 



very ears, a stuormo, and disclosed the noise of the rabble 
and the rule of the nobles, and the finery of the gallants, 
with so real and tangible an effect. The episode is a short 
one. The two periods of Rienzi's power put together scarcely 
amount to eight months ; but there are few chapters in that 
history which is always so turbulent, yet lacks so much the 
charm of personal story and adventure, so picturesque and 
complete. 




LETTER WRITER. 



BOOK IV. 
THE POPES WHO MADE THE CITY. 




ffii/s nrmw 

r- r 



PIAZZA DEL POPOLO. 



BOOK IV. 
THE POPES WHO MADE THE CITY. 



CHAPTER I. 

MARTIN V. EUGENIUS IV. NICOLAS V. 

IT is strange to leave the history of Rome at the climax 
to which the ablest and strongest of its modern masters 
had brought it, when it was the home of the highest ambi- 
tion, and the loftiest claims in the world, the acknowledged 
head of one of the two powers which divided that world 
between them, and claiming a supreme visionary authority 
over the other also ; and to take up that story again (after 
such a romantic episode as we have just discussed) when its 
rulers had become but the first among the fighting principal- 
ities of Italy, men of a hundred ambitions, not one of which 
2L 513 



514 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

was spiritual, carrying on their visionary sway as heads of 
the Church as a matter of routine merely, but reserving all 
their real life and energy for the perpetual internecine war- 
fare that had been going on for generations, and the security 
of their personal possessions. From Innocent III. to such a 
man as Eugenius IV., still and always fighting, mixed up 
with all the struggles of the Continent, hiring Condottieri, 
marshalling troops, with his whole soul in the warfare, so 
continuous, so petty, even so bloodless so far as the actual 
armies were concerned — which never for a moment ceased 
in Italy : is a change incalculable. Let us judge the great 
Gregory and the great Innocent as we may, their aim and 
the purpose of their lives were among the greatest that have 
ever been conceived by man, perhaps the highest ideal ever 
formed, though like all high ideals impossible, so long as 
men are as we know them, and those who choose them are 
as helpless in the matter of selecting and securing the best 
as their forefathers were. But to set up that tribunal on 
earth — that shadow and representation of the great White 
Throne hereafter to be established in the skies — in order 
to judge righteous judgment, to redress wrongs, to neutral- 
ise the sway of might over right — let it fail ever so com- 
pletely, is at least a great conception, the noblest plan at 
which human hands can work. We have endeavoured to 
show how little it succeeded even in the strongest hands ; 
but the failure was a greater thing than any lesser success 
— certainly a much greater thing than the desire to be first 
in that shouting crowd of Italian princedoms and common- 
wealths, to pit Piccinino and Carmagnola against each other, 
to set your honour on the stake of an ironbound band of 
troopers deploying upon a harmless field, in wars which 
would have been not much more important than tourna- 
ments ; if it had not been for the ruin and murder and dev- 
astation of the helpless peasants and the smitten country on 
either side. 



i.] MARTIN V. — EUGENIUS IV. — NICOLAS V. 515 

But the pettier role was one of which, men tired, as much 
as they did of that perpetual strain of the greater which 
required an amount of strength and concentration of mind 
not given to many, such as could not (and this was the 
great defect of the plan) be secured for a line of Popes any 
more than for any other line of men. The Popes who 
would have ruled the world failed, and gave up that for- 
lorn hope ; they were opposed by all the powers of earth, 
they were worn out by fictions of anti-Popes, and by real 
and continual personal sufferings for their ideal : — and 
they did not even secure at any time the sympathy of the 
world. But when among the vain line of Pontiffs who not 
for infamy and not for glory, but per se lived, and flitted, 
a wavering file of figures meaning little, across the surface 
of the world — there arose a Pope here and there, forming 
into a short succession as the purpose grew, who took up 
consciously the aim of making Pome — not Rome Imperial 
nor yet Rome Papal, which were each a natural power on 
the earth and Head of nations, but Pome the City — the 
home of art, the shrine of letters, in another way and with 
a smaller meaning, yet still meaning something, the centre 
of the world — their work and position have always at- 
tracted a great deal of sympathy, and gained at once the 
admiration of all men. English literature has not done much 
justice to the greater Popes. Mr. Bowden's life of Gregory 
VII. is the only work of any importance specially devoted to 
that great ruler. Gregory the Great to whom England owes 
so much, and Innocent III., who was also, though in no 
very favourable way, mixed up in her affairs, have tempted 
no English historian to the labours of a biography. But 
Leo X. has had a very different fate : and even the Borgias, 
the worst of Papal houses, have a complete literature of their 
own. The difference is curious. It is perhaps by this sur- 
vival of the unfittest, so general in literature, that English 
distrust and prejudice have been so crystallised, and that to 



516 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

the humbler reader the word Pope remains the synonym of 
a proud and despotic priest, sometimes Inquisitor and some- 
times Indulger — often corrupt, luxurious, or tyrannical — a 
ruler whose government is inevitably weak yet cruel. The 
reason of this strange preference must be that the love of 
art is more general and strong than the love of history ; or 
rather that a decorative and tangible external object, some- 
thing to see and to admire, is more than all theories of gov- 
ernment or morals. The period of the Renaissance is full 
of horror and impurity, perhaps the least desirable of all 
ages on which to dwell. But art has given it an impor- 
tance to which it has no other right. 

Curious it is also to find that of all the cities of Italy, 
Rome has the least native right to be considered in the his- 
tory of art. No great painter or sculptor, architect or even 
decorator, has arisen among the Roman people. Ancient 
Rome took her art from Greece. Modern Rome has sought 
hers over all Italy — from Florence, from the hills and 
valleys of Umbria, everywhere but in her own bosom. She 
has crowned poets, but, since the days of Virgil and Horace, 
neither of whom were Romans born, though more hers than 
any since, has produced none. All her glories have been 
imported. This of course is often the case with her Popes 
also. Pope Martin V., to whom may be given the first 
credit of the policy of rebuilding the city, was a native-born 
Roman ; but Pope Eugenius IV., who took up its embellish- 
ment still more seriously, was a Venetian, bringing with him 
from the sea-margin the love of glowing colour and that 
" labour of an age in piled stones " which was so dear to 
those who built their palaces upon the waters. Nicolas was 
a Pisan, Pope Leo, who advanced the work so greatly, was a 
Florentine. But their common ambition was to make Rome 
a wonder and a glory that all men might flock to see. The 
tombs of the Apostles interested them less perhaps than 
most of their predecessors : but they were as strongly bent 



i.] MARTIN V. — EUGENIUS IV. — NICOLAS V. 517 

as any upon drawing pilgrims from the ends of the earth to 
see what art could do to make those tombs gorgeous : and 
built their own to be glories too, admired of all the world. 
These men have had a fuller reward than their great prede- 
cessors. Insomuch as the aim was smaller, it was more 
perfectly carried out ; for though it is a great work to hang 
a dome like that of St. Peter's in the air, it is easier than 
to hold the hearts of kings in your hand, and decide the 
destiny of nations. The Popes who made the city have had 
better luck in every way than those who made the Papacy. 
Neither of them secured either the gratitude or even the 
consent of Rome herself to what was done for her. But 
nevertheless almost all that has kept up her fame in the 
world for, let us say, the last four hundred years, was their 
work. 

This period of the history of the great city began when 
Pope Martin V. concluded what has been called the schism 
of the West, and brought back the seat of the Papacy from 
Avignon, where it had been exiled, to Rome. We have 
seen something of the moral and economical state of the 
city during that interregnum. Its physical condition was 
yet more desolate and terrible. The city itself was little 
more than a heap of ruins. The little cluster of the in- 
habited town was as a nest of life in the centre of a vast 
ancient mass of building, all fallen into confusion and decay. 
No one cared for the old Forums, the palaces ravaged by 
many an invasion, burned and beaten down, and quarried out, 
by generations of men to whom the meaning and the memory 
of their founders was as nothing, and themselves only so many 
waste places, or so much available material for the uses of 
the vulgar day. Some one suggests that the early Church 
took pleasure in showing how entirely shattered was the 
ancient framework, and how little the ancient gods had been 
able to do for the preservation of their temples ; and with 
that intention gave them over to desolation and the careless 



518 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

hands of the spoiler. We think that men are much more 
often swayed by immediate necessities than by any elaborate 
motive of this description. The ruins were exceedingly handy 
— every nation in its turn has found such ruins to be so. 
To get the material for your wall, without paying anything 
for it, already at your hand, hewn and prepared as nobody 
then working could do it — what a wonderful simplification 
of labour ! Everybody took advantage of it, small and 
great. Then, when you wanted to build a strong tower or 
fortress to intimidate your neighbours, what an admirable 
foundation were those old buildings, founded as on the very 
kernel and central rock of the earth ! For many centuries 
no one attempted to fill up those great gaps within the city 
walls, in which vines nourished and gardens grew, none the 
worse for the underlying stones that covered themselves 
thickly with weeds and flowers by Nature's lavish assist- 
ance. Buildings of various kinds, adapted to the necessities 
of the moment, grew up by nature in all kinds of places, 
a church sometimes placed in the very lap of an ancient 
temple. Indeed the churches were everywhere, some of 
them humble enough, many of great antique dignity and 
beauty, almost all preserving the form of the basilica, the 
place of meeting where everything was open and clear for 
the holding of assemblies and delivery of addresses, not dim 
and mysterious as for sacrifices of faith. 

So entirely was this state of affairs accepted, that there is 
more talk of repairing than of building in the chronicles ; 
at all times of the Church, each pious Pope undertook some 
work of the kind, mending a decaying chapel or building up 
a broken wall ; but we hear of few buildings of any impor- 
tance, even when the era of the builders first began. Works 
of reparation must have been necessary to some extent after 
every burning or fight. Probably the scuffles in the streets 
did little harm, but when such a terrible inundation took 
place as that of the Normans, and still worse the Saracens, 







-'%,^^^-Jk% 



>*$ 















MODERN ROME : SHELLEY'S TOMB. •* UCe P a y e ^IS- 



i.] MARTIN V. — EUGENIUS IV. — NICOLAS V. 521 

who followed Robert Guiscarcl in the time of Gregory VII., 
it must have been the work of a generation to patch up the 
remnants of the place so as to make it in the rudest way- 
habitable again. It was no doubt in one of these great 
emergencies that the ancient palaces, most durable of all 
buildings, were seized by the people, and converted each 
into a species of rabbit-warren, foul and swarming. It does 
not appear however that any plan of restoring the city to 
its original grandeur, or indeed to any satisfactory recon- 
struction at all, was thought of for centuries. In the 
extreme commotion of affairs, and the long struggle of the 
Popes with the Emperors, there was neither leisure nor 
means for any great scheme of this kind, nor much thought 
of the material framework of the city, while every mind 
was bent upon establishing its moral position and lofty 
standing ground among the nations. As much as was in- 
dispensable would be done : but in these days the require- 
ments of the people in respect to their lodging were few : as 
indeed they still are to an extraordinary extent in Italy, 
where life is so much carried on out of doors. 

It is evident, however, that Rome the city had never yet 
become the object of any man's life or ambition, or that a 
thought of anything beyond what was needful for actual 
use, for shelter or defence, had entered into the thoughts of 
its masters when the Papal Court returned from Avignon. 
The churches alone were cared for now and then, and 
decorated whenever possible with rich hangings, with mar- 
bles and ancient columns generally taken from classical 
buildings, sometimes even from churches of an older date ; 
but even so late as the time of Petrarch so important a 
building as St. John Lateran, the Papal church par excellence, 
lay roofless and half ruined, in such a state that it was im- 
possible to say mass in it. The poet describes Pome itself, 
when, after a long walk amid all the relics of the classical 
ages, his friend and he sat down to rest upon the ruined 



522 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

arches of the Baths of Diocletian, and gazed upon the city 
at their feet — "the spectacle of these grand ruins." "If 
she once began to recognise of herself the low estate in 
which she lies, Rome would make her own resurrection," he 
says with a confidence but poorly merited by the factious 
and restless city. But Borne, torn asunder by the feuds of 
Colonna and Orsini, seizing every occasion to do battle with 
her Pope, only faithful to him in his absence, of which she 
complained to heaven and earth — was little likely to exert 
herself to any such end. 

This was the unfortunate plight in which Borne lay when 
Martin V., a Boman of the house of Colonna, came back in 
the year 1421, with all the treasures of art acquired by the 
Popes during their stay in Prance, to the shrine of the 
Apostles. The historian Platina, whose records are so full 
of life when they approach the period of which he had the 
knowledge of a contemporary, gives a wonderful description 
of her. " He found Borne," says the biographer of the Popes, 
" in such ruin that it bore no longer the aspect of a city but 
rather of a desert. Everything was on the way to complete 
destruction. The churches were in ruins, the country aban- 
doned, the streets in evil state, and an extreme penury 
reigned everywhere. In fact it had no appearance of a city 
or a sign of civilisation. The good Pontiff, moved by the 
sight of such calamity, gave his mind to the work of adorn- 
ing and embellishing the city, and reforming the corrupt 
ways into which it had fallen, which in a short time were 
so improved by his care that not only Supreme Pontiff but 
father of his country he was called by all. He rebuilt the 
portico of St. Peter's which had been falling into ruins, and 
completed the mosaic work of the pavement of the Lateran 
which he covered with fine works, and began that beautiful 
picture which was made by Gentile, the excellent painter." 
He also repaired the palace of the twelve Apostles, so that 
it became habitable. The Cardinals in imitation of him 



i.] MARTIN V. — EUGENIUS IV. — NICOLAS V. 523 

executed similar works in the churches from which each 
took his title, and by this means the city began to recover 
decency and possible comfort at least, if as yet little of its 
ancient splendour. 

"As soon as Pope Martin arrived in Borne," says the 
chronicle, Diarium Romanum, of Inf essura, " he began to 
administer justice, for Rome was very corrupt and full of 
thieves. He took thought for everything, and especially to 
those robbers who were outside the walls, and who robbed 
the poor pilgrims who came for the pardon of their sins to 
Rome." The painter above mentioned, and who suggests 
to us the name of a greater than he, would appear to have 
been Gentile da Fabriano, who seems to have been employed 
by the Pope at a regular yearly salary. These good deeds 
of Pope Martin are a little neutralised by the fact that he 
gave a formal permission to certain other of his workmen to 
take whatever marbles and stones might be wanted for the 
pavement of the Lateran, virtually wherever they happened 
to find them, but especially from ruined churches both 
within and outside of the city. 

Eugenius IV., who succeeded Pope Martin in the year 
1431, was a man who loved above all things to " guerrare e 
murare " — to make war and to build — a splendid and noble 
Venetian, whose fine and commanding person fills one of 
his biographers, a certain Florentine bookseller and book- 
collector, called Vespasiano, with a rapture of admiration 
which becomes almost lyrical, in the midst of his simple 
and garrulous story. 

" He was tall in person, beautiful of countenance, slender and 
serious, and so venerable to behold that there was no one, by reason 
of the great authority that was in hirn, who could look him in the face. 
It happened one evening that an important personage went to speak 
with him, who stood with his head bowed, never raising his eyes, in 
such a way that the Pope perceived it and asked him why he so bowed 
his head. He answered quickly that the Pope had such an aspect by 
nature that none dared meet his eye. I myself recollect often to 
have seen the Pope with his Cardinals upon a balcony near the door 



524 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

of the cloisters of S ta Maria Novella (in Florence) when the Piazza de 
S ta Maria Novella was full of people, and not only the Piazza, hut 
all the streets that led into it. And such was the devotion of the 
people that they stood entranced (stupefatti) to see him, not hearing 
any one who spoke, but turning every one towards the Pontiff : and 
when he began according to the custom of the Pope to say the Acljn- 
torium nostrum in nomine Domini the Piazza was full of weeping and 
cries, appealing to the mercy of God for the great devotion they bore 
towards his Holiness. It appeared indeed that this people saw in him 
not only the vicar of Christ on earth, but the reflection of His true 
Divinity. His Holiness showed such great devotion, and also all his 
Cardinals round him, who were all men of great authority, that veri- 
tably at that moment he appeared that which he represented." 

There is much, refreshment to the soul in the biographies 
of Vespasian o, who was no more than a Florentine book- 
seller as we have said, greatly employed in collecting an- 
cient manuscripts, which was the special taste of the time, 
with a hand in the formation of all the libraries then being 
established, and in consequence a considerable acquaintance 
with great personages, those at least who were patrons of 
the arts and had a literary turn. Pope Eugenius is not in 
ordinary history a highly attractive character, and the gen- 
eral records of the Papacy are not such as to allure the mind 
as with ready discovery of unknown friends. But the two 
Popes whom the old bookman chronicles, rise before us 
in the freshest colours, the first in stately serenity and 
austerity of mien, dazzling in his aspetto di natura, as 
Moses when he came from the presence of God — moving 
all hearts when he raised his voice in the prayers of the 
Church, every listener hanging on his breath, the crowd 
gazing at him overwhelmed as if upon Him whom the Pope 
represented, though no man dared face his penetrating eyes. 
It is a great thing for the most magnificent potentate to 
have such a biographer as our bookseller. Eugenius was as 
kind as he was splendid, according to Vespasiano. One day 
a poor gentleman reduced to want went to the Pope, appeal- 
ing for charity " being in exile, poor, and fuori delta patria," 
words which are more touching than their English syno- 



i.] MARTIN" V. — EUGENIUS IV. — NICOLAS V. 525 

nyms, out of his country, banished from all his belongings : 
an evil which went to the very hearts of those who were 
themselves at any moment subject to that fate, and to whom 
lapatria meant an ungrateful fierce native city — never cer- 
tain in its temper from one moment to another. The Pope 
sent for a purse full of florins, and bade the exile take from 
it as much as he wanted. " Felice, abashed, put in his hand 
timidly, when the Pope turned to him laughing and said, 
' Put in your hand freely, I give it to you willingly.' " 
This being his disposition we need not wonder that Vespa- 
sian adds : — " He never had much supply of money in the 
house; according as he had it, quickly he expended it." 
Remembering what lies before us in history (but not in this 
broken record of men), soon to be filled with Borgias and 
such like, the reader would do well to sweeten his thoughts 
on the edge of the horrors of the Renaissance, with Vespa- 
sian's kind and humane tales. Platina takes\ip the story in 
a different tone. 

" Among other things Eugenius, in order that it might not seem that 
he thought of nothing but fighting (his wars were perpetual, guerrare 
winning the day over murare ; he built like Nehemiah with the sword 
in his other hand), canonized S. Nicola di Tolentino of the order of S. 
Augustine, who did many miracles. He built the portico which leads 
from the Church of the Lateran to the Sancta Sanctorum, and remade 
and enlarged the cloister inhabited by the priests, and completed the 
picture of the Church begun under Martin by Gentile. He was not 
easily moved by wrath, or personal offence, and never spoke evil of any 
man, neither by word of mouth nor hand of write. He was gracious 
to all the schools, specially to those of Rome, where he desired to see 
every kind of literature and doctrine flourish. He himself had little 
literature, but much knowledge, especially of history. He had a great 
love for monks, and was very generous to them, and was also a great 
lover of war, a thing which seems marvellous in a Pope. He was very 
faithful to the engagements he made — unless when he saw that it was 
more expedient to revoke a promise than to fulfil it." 

Martin and Eugenius were both busy and warlike men. 
They were involved in all the countless internal conflicts of 
Italy ; they were confronted by many troubles in the Church, 
by the argumentative and persistent Council of Bale, and 



526 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

an anti-Pope or two to increase their cares. The reign of 
Engenius began by a flight from Rome with one attendant, 
from the mob who threatened his life. Nevertheless it was 
in these agitated days that the first thought of Rome rebuilt, 
as glorious as a bride, more beautiful than in her climax of 
classic splendour, began to enter into men's thoughts. 

The reign of their immediate successor, the learned and 
magnificent Nicolas V., who was created Pope in 1447, was, 
however, the actual era of this new conception. It is not 
necessary, we are thankful to think, to enter here into any 
description of the Renaissance, that age so splendid in art, 
so horrible in history — when every vice seemed let loose 
on the earth, yet the evil demons so draped themselves in 
everything beautiful, that they often attained their most 
dangerous and terrible aspect, that of angels of light. The 
Renaissance has had more than its share in history ; it has 
flooded the world with scandals of every kind, and such 
examples of depravity as are scarcely to be found in any 
other age ; or perhaps it is that no other age has commanded 
the same contrasts and incongruities, the same picturesque 
accessories, the splendour and external grace, the swing of 
careless force and franchise, without restraint and without 
shame. To many minds these things themselves are enough 
to attract and to dazzle, and they have captivated many 
writers to whom the brilliant society, the triumphs of art, 
the ever shifting, ever glittering panorama with its start- 
ling succession of scenes, spectacles, splendours, and trage- 
dies, have made the more serious and more worthy records 
of life appear sombre, and its nobler motives dull in com- 
parison. When Thomas of Sarzana was born in Pisa — in 
a humble house of peasants who had no surname nor other 
distinction, but who managed to secure for him the educa- 
tion which was sufficiently easy in those days for boys des- 
tined to the priesthood — the age of the Renaissance was 
coming into full flower. Literature and learning, the pur- 




^ 



i.] MARTIN V.— EUGENIUS IV. — NICOLAS V. 529 

suit of ancient manuscripts, the worship of Greece and the 
overwhelming influence of its language and masterpieces, 
were the inspiration of the age, so far as matters intellectual 
were concerned. To read and collate and copy was the 
special occupation of the literary class. If they attempted 
any original work, it was a commentary : and a Latin coup- 
let, an epigram, was the highest effort of imagination which 
they permitted themselves. The day of Dante and Petrarch 
was over. No one cared to be volgarizzato — brought down 
in plain Italian to the knowledge of common men. The 
language of their literary traffic was Latin, the object of 
their adoration Greek. To read, and yet to read, and again 
to go on reading, was the occupation of every man who 
desired to make himself known in the narrow circles of 
literature ; and a small attendant world of scribes was 
maintained in every learned household, and accompanied 
the path of every scholar. The world so far as its books 
went had gone back to a period in which gods and men 
were alike different from those of the existing generation ; 
and the living age, disgusted with its own unsatisfactory 
conditions, attempted to gain dignity and beauty by prank- 
ing itself in the ill-adapted robes of a life totally different 
from its own. 

Between the classical ages and the Christian there must 
always be the great gulf fixed of this complete difference 
of sentiment and of atmosphere. And the wonderful con- 
tradiction was more marked than usual in Rome of a world 
devoted outside to the rites and ceremonies of religion, 
while dwelling in its intellectual sphere in the air of a 
region to which Christianity was unknown. The routine of 
devotion never relaxing — planned out for every hour of 
every day, calling for constant attention, constant perform- 
ance, avowedly addressing itself not to the learned or wise, 
avowedly restricting itself in all those enjoyments of life 
which were the first and greatest of objects in the order of 
2m 



530 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

the ancient ages — yet carried on by votaries of the Muses, 
to whom Jove and Apollo were more attractive than any 
Christian ideal — must have made an unceasing and bewil- 
dering conflict in the minds of men. No doubt that conflict, 
and the evident certainty that one or the other must be 
wrong, along with the strong setting of that tide of fashion 
which is so hard to be resisted, towards the less exacting 
creed, had much to do with the fever of the time. Yet the 
curious equalising touch of common life, the established 
order whatever it may be, against which only one here and 
there ever successfully rebels, made the strange conjunction 
possible ; and the final conflict abided its time. Such a 
man as Nicolas V. might indeed fill his palace with scholars 
and scribes, and put his greatest pride in his manuscripts : 
but the affairs of life around were too urgent to affect his 
own constitution as Pope and priest and man of his time. 
He bandied epigrams with his learned convives in his 
moments of leisure : but he had himself too much to do to 
fall into dilettante heathenism. Perhaps the manuscripts 
themselves, the glory of possessing them, the busy scribes 
all labouring for that high end of instructing the world : 
while courtiers never slow to catch the tone that pleased, 
celebrated their sovereign as the head of humane and liberal 
study as well as of the Church — may have been more to 
Nicolas than all his MSS. contained. He remained quite 
sincere in his mass, quite simple in his life, notwithstanding 
the influx of the heathen element : and most likely took no 
note in his much occupied career of the great distance that 
lay between. 

Nicolas V. was the first of those Pontiffs who are the 
pride of modern Pome — the men who, by a strange pro- 
vision, or as it almost seems neglect of Providence, appear 
in the foremost places of the Church pre-occupied with 
secondary matters, when they ought to have been preparing 
for that great Eevolution which, it was once fondly hoped, 



i.] MARTIN V. — EUGENIUS IV. — NICOLAS V. 531 

■was to lay spiritual Eome in ruins, at the very moment 
when material Eome rose most gloriously from her ashes. 
But, notwithstanding that he was still troubled by that 
long-drawn-out Council of Bale, it does not seem that any 
such shadow was in the mind of Nicolas. He stood calm 
in human unconsciousness between heathendom at his back, 
and the Keformation in front of him, going about his daily 
work thinking of nothing, as the majority of men even on 
the eve of the greatest of revolutions so constantly do. 
Nicolas was, like so many of the great Popes, a poor man's 
son, without a surname, Thomas of Sarzana taking his name 
from the village in which he was brought up. He had the 
good fortune, which in those days was so possible to a 
scholar, recommended originally by his learning alone, to 
rise from post to post in the household of bishop and Car- 
dinal until he arrived at that of the Pope, where a man of 
real value was highly estimated, and where it was above all 
things important to have a steadfast and faithful envoy, 
one who could be trusted with the often delicate negotia- 
tions of the Holy See, and who would neither be daunted 
nor led astray by imperial caresses or the frowns of power. 
" He was very learned, dottissimo, in philosophy, and mas- 
ter of all the arts. There were few writers in Greek or in 
Latin of any kind that he had not read their works, and he 
had the whole of the Bible in his memory, and quoted from 
it continually. This intimate knowledge of the Holy Script- 
ures gave the greatest honour to his pontificate and the 
answers he was called upon to make." There were great 
hopes in those days of the reunion of the Greek Church 
with the Latin, an object much in the mind of all the 
greater Popes : to promote which happy possibility Pope 
Eugenius called a Council in Eerrara in 1438, which was 
also intended to confound the rebellious and heretical 
Council of Bale, as well as to bring about, if possible, the 
desired union. The Emperor of the East was there in 



532 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

person, along with the patriarch and a large following ; and 
it was in this assembly that Thomas of Sarzana, then secre- 
tary and counsellor of the Cardinal di Santa Croce — who 
had accompanied his Cardinal over i monti on a mission to 
the King of France from which he had just returned — 
made himself known to Christendom as a fine debater and 
accomplished student. The question chiefly discussed in 
the Council of Ferrara was that which is formally called 
the Procession of the Holy Spirit, the doctrine which has 
always stood between the two Churches, and prevented 
mutual understanding. 

" In this council before the Pope, the Cardinals, and all the court of 
Rome, the Latins disputed daily with the Greeks against their error, 
which is that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father only not from 
the Son : the Latins, according to the true doctrine of the faith, main- 
taining that He proceeds from the Father and the Son. Every morn- 
ing and every evening the most learned men in Italy took part iu this 
discussion as well as many out of Italy, whom Pope Eugenius had 
called together. One in particular, from Negroponte, whose name was 
Niccolo Secondino : wonderful was it to hear what the said Niccolo 
did; for when the Greeks spoke and brought together arguments to 
prove their opinion, Niccolo Secondino explained everything in Latin 
de verbo ad verbum, so that it was a thing admirable to hear : and when 
the Latins spoke he expounded in Greek all that they answered to the 
arguments of the Greeks. In all these disputations Messer Tommaso 
held the part of the Latins, and was admired above all for his univer- 
sal knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, and also of the doctors, ancient 
and modern, both Greek and Latin." 

Messer Tommaso distinguished himself so much in this 
controversy that he was appointed by the Pope to confer 
with certain ambassadors from the unknown, Ethiopians, 
Indians, and " Jacobiti," — were these the envoys of Pres- 
ter John, that mysterious potentate ? or were they Nesto- 
rians as some suggest ? At all events they were Christians 
and persons of singularly austere life. The conference was 
carried on by means of an interpreter, " a certain Venetian 
who knew twenty languages." These three nations were so 
convinced by Tommaso, that they placed themselves under 
the authority of the Church, an incident which does not 



I-] 



MARTIN V.— EUGENIUS IV. — NICOLAS V. 



533 



make any appearance in more dignified history. Even 
while these important matters of ecclesiastical business 




ON THE PINCIO. 



were going on, however, this rising churchman kept his 
eyes open as to every chance of a new, that is an old 
book, and would on various occasions turn away from his 



534 THE MAKERS OF MODERN" ROME. [chap. 

most distinguished visitors to talk apart with Messer Ves- 
pasiano, who once more is our best guide, about their mut- 
ual researches and good luck in the way of finding rare 
examples or making fine copies. "He never went out of 
Italy with his Cardinal on any mission that he did not 
bring back with him some new work not to be found in 
Italy." Indeed Messer Tommaso's knowledge was so well 
understood that there was no library formed on which his 
advice was not asked, and specially by Cosimo dei Medici, 
who begged his help as to what ought to be done for the 
formation of the Library of S. Marco in Florence — to 
which Tommaso responded by sending such instructions 
as never had been given before, how to make a library, 
and to keep it in the highest order, the . regulations all 
written in his own hand. " Everything that he had," says 
Vespasian in the ardour of his admiration, "he spent on 
books. He used to say that if he had it in his power, the 
two things on which he would like to spend money would 
be in buying books and in building (murare) ; which things 
he did in his pontificate, both the one and the other." 
Alas ! Messer Tommaso had not always money, which is a 
condition common to collectors; in which case Vespasian 
tells us (who approved of this mode of procedure as a 
bookseller, though perhaps it was a bad example to be set 
by the Head of the Church) he had "to buy books on 
credit and to borrow money in order to pay the scribes 
and miniaturists." The books, the reader will perceive, 
were curious manuscripts, illustrated by those schools of 
painters in little, whose undying pigments, fresh as when 
laid upon the vellum, smile almost as exquisitely to-day 
from the ancient page as in Messer Tommaso's time. 

There is an enthusiasm of the seller for the buyer in 
Vespasian's description of the dignified book-hunter which 
is very characteristic, but at^ the same time so natural that 
it places the very man before us, as he lived, a man full of 



i.] MARTIN V. — EUGENIUS IV. — NICOLAS V. 535 

humour, facetissimo, saying pleasant things to everybody, 
and making every one to whom he talked his partisan. 

"He was a man open, large and liberal, not knowing how to feign 
or dissimulate, and the enemy of all who feigned. He was also hostile 
to ceremony and adulation, treating all with the greatest friendliness. 
Great though he was as a bishop, as an ambassador, he honoured all 
who came to see him, and desired that whoever would speak with him 
should do so seated by his side, and with his head covered ; and when 
one would not do so (out of modesty) he would take one by the arm 
and make one sit down, whether one liked or not." 

A delightful recollection of that flattering compulsion, 
the great man's touch upon his arm, the seat by his side, 
upon which Vespasian would scarcely be able to sit for 
pleasure, is in the bookseller's tone; and he has another 
pleasant story to tell of G-iannozzo Manetti, who went to see 
their common patron when he was Cardinal and ambassa- 
dor to France, and tried hard, in his sense of too much 
honour done him, to prevent the great man from accom- 
panying him, not only to the door of the reception room, but 
down stairs. "He stood firm on the staircase to prevent 
him from coming further down : but Giannozzo was obliged 
to have patience, being in the Osteria del Lione, for not 
only would Messer Tommaso accompany him down stairs, 
but to the very door of the hotel, ambassador of Pope 
Eugenius as he was." 

We must not, however, allow ourselves to be seduced 
into prolixity by the old bookseller, whose account of his 
patron is so full of gratitude and feeling. As became a 
scholar and lover of the arts, Nicolas V. was a man of peace. 
Immediately after his elevation to the papacy, he declared 
his sentiments to Vespasian in the prettiest scene, which 
shines like one of the miniatures they loved, out of the 
sober page. 

"Not long after he was made Pope, I went to see him on Friday 
evening, when he gave audience publicly, as he did once every week. 
When I went into the hall in which he gave audience it was about one 



536 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

hour of the night (seven o'clock in the evening); he saw me at once, 
and called to me that I was welcome, and that if I would have patience 
a little he would talk to me alone. Not long after I was told to go to 
his Holiness. I went, and according to custom kissed his feet ; after- 
wards he bade me rise, and rising himself from his seat, dismissed the 
court, saying that the audience was over. He then went to a private 
room where twenty candles were burning, near a door which opened 
into an orchard. He made a sign that they should be taken away, and 
when we were alone began to laugh, and to say ' Do the Florentines 
believe, Vespasiano, that it is for the confusion of the proud, that a 
priest only fit to ring the bell should have been made Supreme Pontiff ? ' 
I answered that the Florentines believed that his Holiness had attained 
that dignity by his worth, and that they rejoiced much, believing that 
he would give Italy peace. To this he answered and said : ' I pray God 
that He will give me grace to fulfil that which I desire to do, and to use 
no arms in my pontificate except that which God has given me for my 
defence, which is His cross, and which I shall employ as long as my 
day lasts.' " 

The cool darkness of the little chamber, near the door 
into the orchard, the blazing candles all sent away, the 
grateful freshness of the Soman night — come before us 
like a picture, with the Pope's splendid robes glimmering 
white, and the sober-suited citizen little seen in the quick- 
falling twilight. It must have been in the spring or early- 
summer, the sweetest time in Rome. Pope Eugenius had 
died in the month of February, and it was on the 16th of 
March, 1447, that Nicolas was elected to the Holy See. 

A few years after came the jubilee, in the year 1450, as 
had now become the habit, and the influx of pilgrims was 
very great. It was a time of great profit not only to the 
Romans who turned the city into one vast inn to receive the 
visitors, but also to the Pope. " The people were like ants 
on the roads which led from Florence to Rome," we are 
told. The crowd was so immense crossing the bridge of 
St. Angelo, that there were some terrible accidents, and 
as many as two hundred people were killed on their way to 
the shrine of the Apostles. " There was not a great lord in 
all Christendom who did not come to this jubilee." " Much 
money came to the Apostolical See," continues the biogra- 
pher, " and the Pope began to build in many places, and to 



i.] MARTIN V. — EUGENIUSrV. — NICOLAS V. 537 

send everywhere for Greek and Latin books wherever he 
could find them, without regard to the price. 

"He also had many scribes from every quarter to whom he gave 
constant employment ; also many learned men both to compose new 
works, and to translate those which had not been translated, making 
great provision for them, both ordinary and extraordinary ; and to 
those who translated books, when they were brought to him, he gave 
much money that they might go on willingly with that which they had 
to do. He collected a very great number of books on every subject, 
both in Greek and Latin, to the number of five thousand volumes. 
These at the end of his life were found in the catalogue which did not 
include the half of the copies of books he had on every subject ; for if 
there was a book which could not be found, or which he could not 
have in any other way, he had it copied. The intention of Pope Nico- 
las was to make a library in St. Peter's for the use of the Court of 
Rome, which would have been a marvellous thing had it been carried 
out ; but it was interrupted by death." 

Vespasian adds for his own part a list of these books, 
which occupies a whole column in one of Muratori's gigan- 
tic pages. 

Another anecdote we must add to show our Pope's quaint 
ways with his little court of literary men. 

"Pope Nicolas was the light and the ornament of literature, and of 
men of letters. If there had arisen another Pontiff after him who 
would have followed up his work, the state of letters would have been 
elevated to a worthy degree. But after him things went from bad to 
worse, and there were no prizes for virtue. The liberality of Pope 
Nicolas was such that many turned to him who would not otherwise 
have done so. In every place where he could do honour to men of 
letters, he did so, and left nobody out. When Messer Francesco 
Pilelfo passed through Rome on his way to Naples without paying 
him a visit, the Pope, hearing of it, sent for him. Those who went to 
call him said to him, ' Messer Francesco, we are astonished that you 
should have passed through Rome without going to see him.' Messer 
Francesco replied that he was carrying some of his books to King 
Alfonso, but meant to see the Pope on his return. The Pope had a 
scarsella at his side in which were five hundred florins which he emptied 
out, saying to him, 'Take this money for your expenses on the way.' 
This is what one calls liberal ! He had always a scarsella (pouch) at 
his side where were several hundreds of florins and gave them away 
for God's sake, and to worthy persons. He took them out of the scar- 
sella by handfuls and gave to them. Liberality is natural to men, and 
does not come by nobility nor by gentry : for in every generation we see 
some who are very liberal and some who are equally avaricious." 



538 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

But the literary aspect of Pope Nicolas's character, how- 
ever delightful, is not that with which we are chiefly con- 
cerned. He was the first Pope to conceive a systematic plan 
for the reconstruction and permanent restoration of Eome, a 
plan which it is needless to say his life was not long enough 
to carry out, but which yet formed the basis of all after-plans, 
and was eventually more or less accomplished by different 
hands. 

It was to the centre of ecclesiastical Eome, the shrine of 
the Apostles, the chief church of Christendom and its adja- 
cent buildings that the care of the Builder-Pope was first 
directed. The Leonine city, or Borgo as it is more famil- 
iarly called, is that portion of Rome which lies on the left 
side of the Tiber, and which extends from the castle of St. 
Angelo to the boundary of the Vatican gardens — enclosing 
the church of St. Peter, the Vatican Palace with all its 
wealth, and the great Hospital of Santo Spirito, surrounded 
and intersected by many little streets, and joined to the other 
portions of the city by the bridge of St. Angelo. Behind 
the mass of picture galleries, museums, and collections of 
all kinds, which now fill up the endless halls and corridors 
of the Papal palace, comes a sweep of noble gardens full of 
shade and shelter from the Roman sun, such a resort for the 

"learned leisure 
Which in trim gardens takes its pleasure " 

as it would be difficult to surpass. In this fine extent of 
wood and verdure the Pope's villa or casino, now the only 
summer palace which the existing Pontiff chooses to permit 
himself, stands as in a domain, small yet perfect. Almost 
everything within these walls has been built or completely 
transformed since the days of Nicolas. But then as now, 
here was the heart and centre of Christendom, the supreme 
shrine of the Catholic faith, the home of the spiritual ruler 
whose sway reached over the whole earth. When Nicolas 



i.] MARTIN V. — EUGENIUS IV. — NICOLAS V. 539 

began his reign, the old church of St. Peter was the church 
of the Western world, then as now, classical in form, a stately- 
basilica without the picturesqueness and romantic variety, 
and also, as we think, without the majesty and grandeur of 
a Gothic cathedral, yet more picturesque if less stupendous 
in size and construction than the present great edifice, so 
majestic in its own grave and splendid way, with which 
through all the agitations of the recent centuries, the name 
of St. Peter's has been identified. The earlier church was 
full of riches, and of great associations, to which the won- 
derful St. Peter's we all know can lay claim only as its suc- 
cessor and supplanter. With its flight of broad steps, its 
portico and colonnaded facade crowned with a great tower, 
it dominated the square, open and glowing in the sun with- 
out the shelter of the great existing colonnades or the 
sparkle of the fountains. Behind was the little palace begun 
by Innocent III. to afford a shelter for the Popes in danger- 
ous times, or on occasion to receive the foreign guests whose 
object was to visit the Shrine of the Apostles. Almost all 
the buildings then standing have been replaced by greater, 
yet the position is the same, the shrine unchanged, though 
everything else then existing has faded away, except some 
portion of the old wall which enclosed this sacred place in 
a special sanctity and security, which was not, however, 
always respected. The Borgo was the holiest portion of all 
the sacred city. It was there that the blood of the martyrs 
had been shed, and where from the earliest age of Christian- 
ity their memory and tradition had been preserved. It is 
not necessary for us to enter into the question whether St. 
Peter ever was in Rome, which many writers have labori- 
ously contested. So far as the record of the Acts of the 
Apostles is concerned, there is no evidence at all for or 
against, but tradition is all on the side of those who assert 
it. The position taken by Signor Lanciani on this point 
seems to us a very sensible one. " I write about the monu- 



540 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

Hients of ancient Borne," lie says, " from a strictly archaeo- 
logical point of view, avoiding questions which, pertain, or 
are supposed to pertain, to religious controversy." 

" For the archseologist the presence and execution of SS. Peter and 
Paul in Rome are facts established beyond a shadow of doubt by purely 
monumental evidence. There was a time when persons belonging to 
different creeds made it almost a case of conscience to affirm or deny a 
priori those facts, according to their acceptance or rejection of the 
tradition of any particular Church. This state of feeling is a matter of 
the past at least for those who have followed the progress of recent 
discoveries and of critical literature. There is no event of the Imperial 
age and of Imperial Rome which is attested by so many noble structures, 
all of which point to the same conclusion — the presence and execution 
of the Apostles in the capital of the empire. When Constantine raised 
the monumental basilicas over their tombs on the Via Cornelia and the 
Via Ostiensis : when Eudoxia built the Church ad Vincula : when 
Damasus put a memorial tablet in the Platonia ad Catacombos : 
when the houses of Pudens and Aquila and Prisca were turned into 
oratories : when the name of Nymphse Sancti Petri was given to the 
springs in the catacombs of the Via Nomentana : when the 29th June 
was accepted as the anniversary of St. Peter's execution : when sculp- 
tors, painters, medallists, goldsmiths, workers in glass and enamel, and 
engravers of precious stones, all began to reproduce in Rome the like- 
ness of the apostle at the beginning of the second century, and continued 
to do so till the fall of the Empire : must we consider them as labouring 
under a delusion, or conspiring in the commission of a gigantic fraud ? 
Why were such proceedings accepted without protest from whatever 
city, whatever community — if there were any other — which claimed 
to own the genuine tombs of SS. Peter and Paul ? These arguments 
gain more value from the fact that the evidence on the other side is 
purely negative." 

This is one of those practical arguments which are always 
more interesting than those which depend upon theories 
and opinions. However, there are many books on both 
sides of the question which may be consulted. We are 
content to follow Signor Lanciani. The special sanctity 
and importance of II Borgo originated in this belief. The 
shrine of the Apostle was its centre and its glory. It was 
this that brought pilgrims from the far corners of the 
earth before there was any masterpiece of art to visit, or 
any of those priceless collections which now form the 
glory of the Vatican. The spot of the Apostle's execution 
was indicated "by immemorial tradition" as between the 



i.] MARTIN V. — EUGENIUS IV. — NICOLAS V. 541 

two goals (inter duas rnetas) of Nero's circus, which spot 
Signor Lanciani tells us is exactly the site of the obelisk 
now standing in the piazza of St. Peter. A little chapel, 
called the Chapel of the Crucifixion, stood there in the 
early ages, before any great basilica or splendid shrine was 
possible. 

This sacred spot, and the church built to commemorate 
it, were naturally the centre of all those religious tradi- 
tions which separate Rome from every other city. It was 
to preserve them from assault, " in order that it should be 
less easy for the enemy to make depredations and burn 
the church of St. Peter, as they have heretofore done," that 
Leo IV., the first Pope, whom we find engaged in any real 
work of construction built a wall round the mount of the 
Vatican, the " Colle Vaticano " — little hill, not so high as 
the seven hills of Rome — where against the strong wall 
of Nero's circus Constantine had built his great basilica. 
At that period — in the middle of the ninth century — 
there was nothing but the church and shrine — no palace 
and no hospital. The existing houses were given to the 
Corsi, a family which had been driven out of their island, 
according to Platina, by the Saracens, who shortly before 
had made an incursion up to the very walls of Eome, 
whither the peoples of the coast (luoghi maritimi del Mar 
Terreno) from Naples northward had apparently pursued 
the Corsairs, and helped the Eomans to beat them back. 
One other humble building of some sort, "called Burgus 
Saxonum, Vicus Saxonum, Schola Saxonum, and simply 
Saxia or Sassia," it is interesting to know, existed close 
to the sacred centre of the place, a lodging built for him- 
self by Ina, King of Wessex, in 727. Thus we have a 
national association of our own with the central shrine of 
Christianity. " There was also a Schola Francorum in the 
Borgo." The pilgrims must have built their huts and set 
up some sort of little oratory — favoured, as was the case 



542 



THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 



even in Pope Nicolas's clay, by the excellent quarry of the 
circus close at hand — as near as possible to the great 




IN THE CORSO : CHURCH DOORS. 



shrine and basilica which they had come so far to say 
their prayers in ; and attracted too, no doubt, by the free- 



i.] MARTIN V. — EUGENIUS IV. — NICOLAS V. 543 

dom of the lonely suburb between the green hill and the 
flowing river. Leo IV. built his wall round this little city, 
and fortified it by towers. "In every part he put sculpt- 
ures of marble and wrote a prayer," says Platina. One of 
these gates led to St. Pellegrino, another was close to the 
castle of St. Angelo, and was " the gate by which one goes 
forth to the open country." The third led to the School 
of the Saxons ; and over each was a prayer inscribed. 
These three prayers were all to the same effect — "that 
God would defend this new city which the Pope had en- 
closed with walls and called by his own name, the Leonine 
City, from all assaults of the enemy, either by fraud or 
by force." 

This was then from the beginning the citadel and inner- 
most sanctuary of Pome. It was not till much later, under 
the reign of Innocent ITL, that the idea of building a house 
for the Pope within that enclosure originated. The same 
great Pope founded the vast hospital of the Santo Spirito 
— on the site of a previous hospice for the poor either 
within or close to its walls. Thus it game to be the lodging 
of the Sovereign Pontiff, and of the scarcely less sacred 
sick and suffering, as well as the most holy and chiefest 
of all Christian sanctuaries. Were we to be very minute, 
it might be easily proved that almost every Pope contrib- 
uted something to the existence and decoration of the Leo- 
nine city, the imperium in imperio; and specially, as was 
natural, to the great basilica. 

The little Palazzo di San Pietro being close to St. Angelo, 
the stronghold and most safe resort in danger, was occupied 
by the court on its return from Avignon, and probably then 
became the official home of the Popes; though for some 
time there seems to have been a considerable latitude in that 
respect. Pope Martin afterwards removed to the Palace 
of the Apostles. Another of the Popes preferred to all 
others the great Palazzo Venezia, which he had built : but 



544 THE MAKERS OE MODERN ROME. [chap. 

the name of the Vatican was henceforth received as the title 
of the Papal conrt. The enlargement and embellishment of 
this palace thns became naturally the great object of the 
Popes, and nothing was spared upon it. It is put first in 
every record of achievement even when there is other im- 
portant work to describe. " Nicolas," says Platina, " builded 
magnificently both in the Vatican, and in the city. He 
rebuilt the churches of St. Stefano Potondo and of St. Teo- 
doro," the former most interesting church being built upon 
the foundations of a round building of classical times, sup- 
posed, Mr. Hare tells us, to have belonged to the ancient 
Fleshmarket, as we should say, the Macellum Magnum. 
S. Teodoro is also a rotondo. It would seem that there 
were different opinions as to the success of these restorations 
in the fifteenth century such as arise among ourselves in 
respect to almost every work of the same kind. A certain 
" celebrated architect," Francesco di Giorgio di Martino, of 
Sienna, was then about the world, a man who spoke his 
mind, "ffeclifttio ruinato," he says of St. Stefano, with 
equal disregard to spelling and to manners. " Rebuilt," 
he adds, " by Pope Nichola ; but much more spoilt : " 
which is such a thing as we now hear said of the once 
much- vaunted restorations of Sir Gilbert Scott. Our Pope 
also "made a leaden roof for Sta. Maria Potonda in the 
middle of the city, built by M. Agrippa as a temple for all 
the gods and called the Pantheon." He must have been 
fond of this unusual form ; but whether it was a mere whim 
of personal liking, or if there was any meaning in his con- 
struction of these round temples, we have no information. 
Perhaps Nicolas had a special admiration of the solemn 
and beautiful Pantheon, in which we completely sympathise. 
The question is too insignificant to be inquired into. Yet 
it is curious in its way. 

These were however, though specially distinguished by 
Platina, but a drop in the ocean to the numberless undertak- 



i.] MARTIN V. — EUGENIUS IV. — NICOLAS V. 545 

ings of Pope Nicolas throughout the city ; and all these 
again were inferior in importance to the great works in St. 
Peter's and the Vatican, to which his predecessors had each 
put a hand so long as their time lasted. " In the Vatican," 
says Platina, "he built those apartments of the Pontiff, 
which are to be seen to this day : and he began the wall of 
the Vatican, great and high, with its incredible depth of 
foundation, and high towers, to hold the enemy at a dis- 
tance, so that neither the church of St. Peter (as had already 
happened several times) nor the palace of the Pope should 
ever be sacked. He began also the tribune of the church 
of St. Peter, that the church might hold more people, and 
might be more magnificent. He also rebuilt the Ponte 
Molle, and erected near the baths of Viterbo a great palace. 
Having the aid of much money, he built many parts of the 
city, and cleansed all the streets." Great also in other ways 
were his gifts to his beloved church and city — " vases of 
gold and silver, crosses ornamented with gems, rich vest- 
ments and precious tapestry, woven with gold and silver, 
and the mitre of the Pontificate, which demonstrated his 
liberality." It was he who first placed a second crown on 
the mitre, which up to this time had borne one circlet alone. 
The complete tiara with the three crowns was adopted in a 
later reign. 

The two previous Popes, his predecessors, had been mag- 
nificent also in their acquisitions for the Church in this 
kind ; both of them being curious in goldsmiths' work, then 
entering upon its most splendid development, and in their 
collections of precious stones. The valuable work of M. 
Muntz, Les Arts a la cour des papes, abounds in details of 
these splendid jewels. Indeed his sober records of daily 
work and its payment seem to transport us out of one busy 
scene into another as by the touch of a magician's wand, as 
if Eome the turbulent and idle, full of aimless popular 
rushes to and fro, had suddenly become a beehive full of 

2N 



546 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. chap. 

energetic workers and the noise of cheerful labour, both out 
of doors in the sun, where the masons were loudly at work, 
and in many a workshop, where the most delicate and in- 
genious arts were being carried on. Roman artists at length 
began to appear amid the host of Florentines and the whole 
world seems to have turned into one great bottega full of 
everything rich and rare. 

The greatest, however, of all the conceptions of Pope 
Nicolas, the very centre of his great plan, was the library of 
the Vatican, which he began to build and to which he left 
all the collections of his life. Vespasian gives us a list of 
the principal among those 5,000 volumes, the things which 
he prized most, which the Pope bequeathed to the Church 
and to Rome. These cherished rolls of parchment, many of 
them translations made under his own eyes, were enclosed 
in elaborate bindings ornamented with gold and silver. We 
are not, however, informed whether any of the great treas- 
ures of the Vatican library came from his hands — the good 
Vespasian taking more interest in the work of his scribes 
than in Codexes. He tells us of 500 scudi given to Lorenzo 
Valle with a pretty speech that the price was below his 
merits, but that eventually he should have more liberal pay ; 
of 1,500 scudi given to Guerroni for a translation of the 
Iliad, and so forth. It is like a bookseller of the present 
day vaunting his new editions to a collector in search of the 
earliest known. But Pope Nicolas, like most other patrons 
of his time, knew no Greek, nor probably ever expected that 
it would become a usual subject of study, so that his trans- 
lations were precious to him, the chief way of making his 
treasures of any practical use. 

The greater part, alas ! of all this splendour has passed 
away. One pure and perfect glory, the little chapel of San 
Lorenzo, painted by the tender hand of Fra Angelico, remains 
unharmed, the only work of that grand painter to be found 
in Rome. If one could have chosen a monument for the 




s 



I.] MARTIN V. — EUGENIUS IV.— NICOLAS V. 549 

good Pope, the patron and friend of art in every form, there 
could not have been a better than this. Fra Angelico seems 
to have been brought to Rome by Pope Eugenius, but it was 
under Nicolas, in two or three years of gentle labour, that 
the work was done. It is, however, impossible to enumerate 
all the undertakings of Pope Nicolas. He did something to 
re-establish or decorate almost all of the great basilicas. 
It is feared — but here our later historians speak with bated 
breath, not liking to bring such an accusation against the 
kind Pope, who loved men of letters — that the destruction 
of St. Peter's, afterwards ruthlessly carried out by succeed- 
ing Popes was in his plan : on the pretext, so constantly 
employed, and possibly believed in, of the instability of the 
ancient building. But there is no absolute certainty of 
evidence, and at all events he might have repented, for he 
certainly did not do that deed. He began the tribune, how- 
ever, in the ancient church, which may have been a prepara- 
tion for the entire renewal of the edifice ; and he did much 
toVards the decoration of another round church, that of 
the Madonna delle Febbre, an ill-omened name, attached to 
the Vatican. He also built the Belvedere in the gardens, 
and surrounded the whole with strong walls and towers 
(round), one of which according to Nibby still remained 
fifty years ago ; which very little of Nicolas's building has 
done. His great sin was one which he shared with all his 
brother-Popes, that he boldly treated the antique ruins of 
the city as quarries for his new buildings, not without protest 
and remonstrance from many, yet with the calm of a mind 
preoccupied and seeing nothing so great and important as 
the work upon which his own heart was set. 

This excellent Pope died in 1455, soon after having 
received the news of the downfall of Constantinople, which 
is said to have broken his heart. He had many ailments, 
and was always a small and spare man of little strength of 
constitution ; but " nothing transfixed his heart so much as 



550 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

to hear that the Turk had taken Constantinople and killed 
the Europeans, with many thousands of Christians," among 
them that same " Imperadore de Gostantinopli " whom he 
had seen seated in state at the Council of Ferrara, listening 
to his own and other arguments, only a few years before — 
as well as the greater part, no doubt, of his own clerical op- 
ponents there. When he was dying " being not the less of a 
strong spirit," he called the Cardinals round his bed, and 
many prelates with them, and made them a last address. 
His pontificate had lasted a little more than eight years, and 
to have carried out so little of his great plan must have 
been heavy on his heart ; but his dying words are those of 
one to whom the holiness and unity of the Church came 
before all. No doubt the fear that the victorious Turks 
might spread ruin over the whole of Christendom was first 
in his mind at that solemn hour. 

" ' Knowing, my dearest brethren, that I am approaching the hour of 
my death, I would, for the greater dignity and authority of the Apos- 
tolic See, make a serious and important testament before you, not com- 
mitted to the memory of letters, not written, neither on a tablet nor on 
parchment, but given by my living voice that it may have more author- 
ity. Listen, I pray you, while your little Pope Nicolas (papa Mcco- 
lajo) in the very instant of dying makes his last will before you. In 
the first place I render thanks to the Highest God for the measureless 
benefits which, beginning from the day of my birth until the present 
day, I have received of His infinite mercy. And now I recommend to 
you this beautiful spouse of Christ, whom, so far as I was able, I have 
exalted and magnified, as each of you is well aware ; knowing this to 
be to the honour of God, for the great dignity that is in her, and the 
great privileges that she possesses, and so worthy, and formed by so 
worthy an Author, who is the Creator of the Universe. Being of sane 
mind and intellect, and having done that which every Christian is 
called to do, and specially the Pastor of the Church, I have received 
the most sacred body of Christ with penitence, taking from His table 
with my two hands, and praying the Omnipotent God that he would 
pardon my sins. Having had these sacraments I have also received 
the extreme unction which is the last sacrament for the redeeming of 
my soul. Again I recommend to you, as long as I am able, the Roman 
Church, notwithstanding that I have already done so ; for this is the 
most important duty you have to fulfil in the sight of God and men. 
This is that true Spouse of Christ which He bought with his blood. 
This is that robe without seam, which the impious Jews would have 
torn but could not. This is that ship of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, 



i.] MARTIN V. — EUGENIUS IV. — NICOLAS V. 551 

agitated and tossed by varied fortunes of the winds, but sustained by the 
Omnipotent God, so that she can never be submerged or shipwrecked. 
With all the strength of your souls sustain her and rule her : she has 
need of your good works, and you should show a good example by your 
lives. If you with all your strength care for her and love her, God will 
reward you, both in this present life and in the future with life eternal; 
and to do this with all the strength we have, we pray you : do it dili- 
gently, dearest brethren.' 

" Having said this he raised his hands to heaven and said, ' Omnip- 
otent God, grant to the Holy Church, and to these fathers, a pastor 
who will preserve her and increase her ; give to them a good pastor 
who will rule and govern thy flock the most maturely that one can rule 
and govern. And I pray for you and comfort you as much as I know 
and can. Pray for me to God in your prayers.' When he had ended 
these words, he raised his right arm and, with a generous soul, gave 
the benediction — Benedicat vos Deus, Pater et Filius et Spiritus 
Sanctus — speaking with a raised voice and solemnly, in modo Pon- 
tificale.' 1 ' 1 

These tremulous words, broken and confused by the weak- 
ness of his last hours, were taken down by the favourite 
scribe, Giannozzo Manetti, in the chamber of the dying 
Pope: with much more of the most serious matter to the 
Church and to Rome. His eager desire to soften all possi- 
ble controversies and produce in the minds of the conclave 
about his bed, so full of ambition and the force of life, the 
softened heart which would dispose them to a peaceful and 
conscientious election of his successor, is very touching, 
coming out of the fogs and mists of approaching death. 

In the very age that produced the Borgias, and himself 
the head of that band of elegant scholars and connoisseurs, 
everything but Christian, to whom Rome owes so much of 
her external beauty and splendour, it is pathetic to stand by 
this kind and gentle spirit as he pauses on the threshold 
of a higher life, subduing the astute and worldly minded 
Churchmen round him with the tender appeal of the dying 
father, their Papa ISTiccolajo, familiar and persuasive — be- 
seeching them to be of one accord without so much as say- 
ing it, turning his own weakness to account to touch their 
hearts, for the honour of the Church and the welfare of 
the flock. 




MODERN DEGRADATION OF A PALACE. 



CHAPTEE II. 



CALIXTUS III. PIUS II. PAUL II. SIXTUS IV. 



IT is not unusual even in the strictest of hereditary mon- 
archies to find the policy of one ruler entirely contra- 
dicted and upset by his successor; and it is still more 
natural that such a thing should happen in a succession 
of men, unlike and unconnected with each other as were 
the Popes; but the difference was more than usually 
great between Nicolas and Calixtus III., the next occu- 
pant of the Holy See, elected 1455, died 1458, who was 
an old man and a Spaniard, and loved neither books nor 
pictures, nor any of the new arts which had bewitched (as 
many people believed) Pope Nicolas and seduced him into 
squandering the treasure of the Papacy upon unnecessary 

552 



ch. ii.] CALIXTUS III., PIUS H., PAUL II., SIXTUS IV. 553 

buildings, and still more unnecessary decorations. Calixtus 
was a Borgia, the first to introduce the horror of that name : 
but he was not in himself a harmful personage. " He spent 
little in building," says Platina, "for he lived but a short 
time, and saved all his money for the undertaking against 
the Turks," an enterprise which had become a very real 
and necessary one, now that Constantinople had fallen ; 
but which had no longer the romance and sentiment of the 
Crusades to inspire it, though successive Pontiffs did their 
best to rouse Christendom on the subject. The aged Span- 
ish Cardinal threw himself into it with all the fervour of 
his nature, which better than many others knew the mettle 
of the Moor. His short term of power was entirely occu- 
pied with this. A little building went on, which could not 
be helped : the walls had always to be looked to ; but Pope 
Mcolas's army of scribes were all turned off summarily; 
the studios were closed, the artist people turned away about 
their business ; all the great works put a stop to. Worse 
even than that — for Calixtus was a short-lived interruption, 
and perhaps might only have stopped the progress of events 
for some three years or so — Pope ISTicolas's great plan, which 
was so complete, went out of sight, and was lost in the 
limbo of good intentions. His workmen were dispersed, 
and the fashion to which he had accustomed the world, 
changed. It was only resumed with earnestness after 
several generations, and never quite in the great lines which 
he had laid out. Neither did the new Pope get his Crusade, 
which might have been a better thing. Yet Calixtus was 
a person assai generoso, Platina tells us ; in any case he 
occupied his great post for a very short time. 

His successor, Pius II., 1458, on the other hand, was such a 
man as might well have inherited the highest purpose. He 
is almost better known as Eneas Silvius, a famous traveller 
and writer — not the usual peasant monk without a surname 
as so many had been, but one of the Piccolomini of Sienna, 



554 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

a great house, though ruined or partially ruined in his day. 
He was a man who had travelled much, and was known at 
all the courts; at one time young, heretical, adventurous, 
and ready to pull down all authorities, the life and soul 
of that famous Council of Bale which took upon itself to 
depose Pope Eugenius ; but not long after that outburst 
of independent youthfulness and energy was over, we find 
him filling the highest offices, the Legate of Eugenius and 
a very rising yet always much-opposed Cardinal. He it 
was who travelled to a remote and obscure little country 
called Scotland, in the Pope's name, to arrange matters 
there; and found the people very savage, digging stones 
out of the earth to make fires of them : but having plenty 
of fish and flesh, and surprisingly comfortable on the whole. 
He was one of the ablest men who ever sat on the Papal 
throne, but too reasonable, too moderate, too natural for the 
position. He loved literature, or at least he loved books, 
which is not always the same thing, and himself wrote a 
great many on various subjects ; and he was so fortunate 
as to have the historian of the Popes, Platina — our guide, 
who we would have wished might live for ever — for his 
librarian, who was worth all the marble tombs in the world 
and all the epitaphs to a man whom he liked, and worse 
than any heathen conqueror to the man who was unkind to 
him. 

Platina gives us a beautiful character of Pope Pius. He 
is very lenient to the faults of his youth, as indeed most 
historians are in respect to personages afterwards great, 
finding in their peccadilloes, we presume, a welcome and 
picturesque relief to the perfections that become a Pope. 
Yet Pius II. was never too perfect. He was a man who 
disliked the narrowness of a court, and loved the fresh air, 
and to give audience in his garden, and to eat his modest 
meal beside the tinkling of a fountain or under the shade 
of trees. He loved wit and a joke, and even gave ear to 



ii.] CALIXTUS III., PIUS II., PAUL II., SIXTUS IV. 555 

ridiculous things and to the excellent mimicry of a certain 
Florentine, who " took off " the courtiers and other absurd 
persons, and made his Holiness laugh. And he was hasty 
in temper, but bore no malice, and paid no attention to evil 
reports raised about himself. "He never punished those 
who spoke ill of him, saying that in a free city like Borne, 
every one should speak freely what he thought." He hated 
lying and story-tellers, and never made war unless he was 
forced to it. Whenever he was freed from the trials of busi- 
ness he took his pleasure in reading or in writing. " Books 
were more dear to him than sapphires or emeralds," says Pla- 
tina, with a shrewd prick by the way at his successor, Paul, 
as we shall afterwards see, " and he was used to say that his 
chrysolites and other jewels were all enclosed in them." 
He never took a meal alone if he could help it, but loved a 
lively companion, and to make his little feasts in his garden 
as we have said, shocking much the scandalised courtiers, 
who declared that no other Pope had ever done such a 
thing ; for which Pope Pius cared nothing at all. He wrote 
upon all kinds of subjects, from a grammar which he made 
for the little King of Hungary, to histories of various king- 
doms, and philosophical disquisitions. Indeed the list of 
his subjects is like that of a series of popular lectures in 
our own day. " He wrote many books in dialogue — upon 
the power of the Council of Bale, upon the sources of the 
Nile, upon hunting, upon fate, upon the presence of God." 
If he had been a University Extension lecturer, he could 
scarcely have been more many-sided. And he wrote largely 
upon peace, no less than thirty-two orations " upon the peace 
of kings, the concord of princes, the tranquillity of nations, 
the defence of religion, and the quiet of the world." There 
was neither peace among kings, concord among princes, nor 
tranquillity among nations when Pope Pius delivered and 
collected his orations. They ought to have had all the 
greater effect; but we fear he was too wise a man to put 



55§ THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

much faith in any immediate result. His greatest work, 
however, was his Commentaries, an enlarged and philosophi- 
cal study of his own times, which he did not live long 
enough to finish. 

This Pontiff carried on the work of his predecessor more 
or less, but without any great zeal for it. " He collected 
manuscripts, but with discretion; he built, but it was in 
moderation," Bishop Creighton says. Platina, with more 
warmth, tells us that " he took great delight in building," 
but he seems to have confined himself to his own immediate 
surroundings, working at the improvement of St. Peter's, 
building a chapel, putting up a statue, restoring the great 
flight of stairs which then as now led up to the portico 
which previous Popes had adorned ; and adding a little to 
the defences and decoration of the Vatican. He is sus- 
pected of having had a guilty liking for the Gothic style in 
architecture which greatly shocked the Roman dilettanti; 
and certainly expressed his admiration for some of the 
great churches in Germany with enthusiasm. One great 
piece of architectural work he did, but it was not at Rome. 
It was in the headquarters of his family at Sienna, and 
specially in the little adjacent town of Corsignano, where 
he was born, one of those little fortified villages which add 
so much to the beauty of Italy. This little place he made 
glorious with beautiful buildings, forgetting his native wis- 
dom and discretion in the foolishness of that narrow but 
intense patriotism which bound the Italian to his native 
town, and made it the joy of the whole earth to his eyes. 
It gives a charm the more to his interesting character that 
he should have been capable of such a folly; though not 
perhaps that he should have changed its name to Pienza, a 
reflection of his own pontifical name. 

With this, however, we have nothing to do, and not very 
much altogether with the great Piccolomini, though he is one 
of the most interesting and sympathetic figures which has 



ii.] CALIXTUS III., PIUS II., PAUL II., SIXTUS IV. 557 

ever sat upon the papal throne. His death was a strange 
and painful conclusion to a life full of work, full of admir- 
able sense and intelligence without exaggeration or pretence. 
He followed the policy of his predecessors in desiring to 
institute a Crusade, one more strenuously called for perhaps 
than any which preceded it, since Constantinople had now 
fallen into the hands of the Turks, and Christendom was 
believed to be in danger. It is scarcely possible to imagine 
that his full and active life should have been much occupied 
by this endeavour : nor can we think that this great spectator 
and observer of human affairs was consumed with anxiety in 
respect to a danger about which the civilised world was so 
careless : but in the end of his life he seems to have taken 
it up with tragical earnestness, perhaps out of compunction 
for previous indifference. The impulse which once moved 
whole nations to take the cross had died out ; and not even 
the sight of the beautiful metropolis of Eastern Christianity 
fallen into the hands of the infidel, and so splendid a Chris- 
tian temple as St. Sophia turned into a mosque had power to 
rouse Europe. The King of Hungary was the only monarch 
who showed any real energy in the matter, feeling his own 
safety imperilled, and Venice, also for the same reason, was 
the only great city ; and except in these quarters the remon- 
strances and entreaties of Pius had no success. In these 
circumstances the Pope called his court about him and an- 
nounced to them the plan he had formed, a most unlikely 
plan for such a man, yet possible enough if there was any 
remorseful sense of carelessness in the past. The Duke of 
Burgundy had promised to go if another prince would join 
him. The Pope determined that in the absence of any other 
he himself would be that prince. Old as he was, and sick, 
and no warrior, and perhaps with but little of the zeal which 
makes such a self-devotion possible, he would himself go 
forth to repel the infidel. " We do not go to fight," he said, 
with faltering voice. "We will imitate those who, when 



558 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

Israel fought against Amalek, prayed on the mountain. 
We will stand on the prow of our ship or upon some hill, 
and with the holy Eucharist before our eyes, we will ask 
from our Lord victory for our soldiers." After a pause of 
alarm and astonishment the Cardinals consented, and such 
preparations as were possible were made. It was published 
throughout all Christendom that the Pope was to sail from 
Ancona at a certain date, and that every one who could pro- 
vide for the expenses of the journey should meet him there. 
He invited the old Doge of Venice to join with himself and 
the Duke of Burgundy, also an old man. "We shall be 
three old men," he said, " and our trinity will be aided by 
the Trinity of Heaven." A kind of sublimity was in the 
suggestion, a sublimity almost trembling on the borders of 
the ridiculous ; for the enterprise was no longer one which 
accorded with the spirit of the time, and all was hesitation 
and difficulty. A miscellaneous host crowded to Ancona, 
where the Pope, much suffering, was carried in his litter, 
quite unfit for a long journey ; but the most of them had no 
money and had to be sent back ; and the Venetian galleys 
engaged to transport those who were left did not arrive till 
the pilgrims had waited long, and were worn out with delay 
and confusion. They arrived at last a day or two before 
Pope Pius died, when he was no longer capable of moving 
— and with his death the ill-fated Crusade fell to pieces 
and was heard of no more. It was the most curious end, in 
an enthusiasm founded upon anxious calculation, of a man 
who was never an enthusiast, whose eyes were always too 
clear-sighted to permit him to be led away by feeling, a man 
of letters and of thought, rather than of romantic-solemn 
enterprises or the zeal of a martyr. That he was a kind of 
martyr to the strong conviction of a danger which threatened 
Christendom, and the forlorn hope of repelling it, there can 
be no doubt. 

Pius II. was succeeded in 1464 by Paul II., also in his 



ii.] CALIXTUS III., PIUS II., PAUL II., SIXTUS IV. 559 

way a man of more than usual ability and note. He was a 
Venetian, the nephew of the last Venetian Pope, Eugenius ; 
and it was he who built, to begin with, the fine palace still 
called the Palazzo Venezia, with which all visitors to Eome 
are so well acquainted. It was built for his own residence 
during his Cardinalate, and remained his favourite dwelling, 
a habitation still very much more in the centre of everything, 
as we say, than the remote and stately Vatican. The reader 
will easily recall the imposing appearance of this fine build- 
ing, placed at the end of the straight street — the chief in 
Eome — in which were run the many races which formed 
part of the carnival festivities, a recent institution in 
Pope Paul's day. The street was called the Corso in conse- 
quence ; and it is not long since the last of these races, one 
of horses without riders, was abolished. The Palazzo Vene- 
zia commanded the long straight street from its windows, 
and all the humours and wonders of the town, in which the 
Pope took pleasure. It was Paul's fate to make himself an 
implacable enemy in the often contemned, but — as regards 
the place in history of either pope or king — all-important 
class of writers, which it must have seemed ridiculous in- 
deed for a Sovereign Pontiff to have kept terms with, on 
account of any power in their hands. But this was a short- 
sighted conclusion, unworthy the wisdom of a Pope. And 
the result of the Pontiff's ill-treatment of the historian 
Platina, to whom we are so much indebted, especially for the 
lives- of those Popes who were his contemporaries, has been 
a lasting stigma upon his character, which the researches 
of the impartial critics of a later age have shown to be 
partly without foundation, but which until quite recently 
was accepted by everybody. In this way a writer has a 
power which is almost absolute. We have seen in our own 
days a conspicuous instance of this in the treatment by Mr. 
Froude of the life of Thomas Carlyle. Numbers of Carlyle's 
friends made instant protest against the view taken by his 



560 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

biographer ; but they did so in evanescent methods — in 
periodical literature, the nature of which is to die after it 
has had its day — while a book remains. Very likely many 
of Pope Paul's friends protested against the coolly ferocious 
account of his life given by the aggrieved and revengeful 
author ; but it is only quite recently, in the calm of great 
distance, that people have come to think — charitably in 
respect to Pope Paul II. — that perhaps Platina's strictures 
might not be true. 

Platina, however, had great provocation. He was one of 
the disciples of the famous school of Humanists, the then 
new school of learning, literature, and criticism, which had 
arisen under the papacy and patronage of Pope Nicolas V., 
and had continued to exist, though with less encourage- 
ment, under his successors. Pius II. had not been their 
patron as Nicolas was, but he had not been hostile to them, 
and his tastes were all of a kind congenial to their work. 
But Paul looked coldly upon the group of contemptuous 
scholars who had made themselves into an academy, and 
vapoured much about classical examples and the superiority 
of ancient times. He had no quarrel with literature, but he 
persuaded himself to believe that the academy which talked 
and masqueraded under classic names, and' played with 
dangerous theories of liberty, and criticism of public pro- 
ceedings, was a nest of conspirators and heretics scheming 
against himself. There was no foundation whatever for his 
fears, but that mattered little in those arbitrary days. This 
is Platina's own account of the matter : 

"When Pius was dead and Paul created in his place, he had no 
sooner grasped the keys of Peter, than he proceeded — whether in 
consequence of a promise to do so, or because the decrees and proceed- 
ings of Pius were odious to him — to dismiss all the officials elected by 
Pius, on the ground that they were useless and ignorant (as he said) : 
and deprived them of their dignity and revenues without permitting 
them to say a word in their own defence, though they were men who 
for their erudition and doctrine had been gathered together from all 
the ends of the world, and attracted to the court of Rome by the 



ii.] CALIXTUS III., PIUS II., PAUL II., SIXTUS IV. 561 

promise of great reward. The College was full of men of letters and 
virtuous persons learned in the law both divine and human. Among 
them were poets and orators who gave no less ornament to the court 
than they received from it. Paul sent them all away as incapable and 
as strangers, and deprived them of everything, although those who had 
bought their offices were allowed to retain them. Those who suffered 
most attempted to dissuade him from this intention, and I, who was 
one of them, begged earnestly that our cause might be committed 
to the judge of the Rota. Then he fixed on me his angry eyes. ' So,' 
he said, ' thou wouldst appeal to other judges against the decision we 
have made ! Know ye not that all justice and law are in the casket of 
our bosom ? Thus I will it to be. Begone, all of you ! for, whatever 
you may wish I am Pope, and according to my pleasure can make and 
unmake.' " 

After hearing this determined assertion of right, the dis- 
placed scholars withdrew, but continued to plead their cause 
by urgent letters, which ended at last in an unwise threat to 
make the continental princes aware how they were treated, 
and to bring about the Pope's ea,rs a Council, to which he 
would be obliged to give account. The word Council was 
to a Pope what the red flag is to a bull, and in a transport 
of rage Paul II. threw Platina into prison. He never in his 
life did a more foolish thing. The historian was kept in 
confinement for two years, and passed one long winter with- 
out fire, subjected to every hardship; but finally was set 
free by the intercession of Cardinal Gonzaga, and remained, 
by order of the Pope, under observation in Pome, where 
watching with a vigilant eye all that went on, he laid up his 
materials for that brief but scathing biography of Paul II. 
which forms one of the keenest effects in his work, and 
from which the Pope's memory has never recovered. It is 
a dangerous thing to provoke a man of letters who has a 
keen tongue and a gift of recollection, especially in those 
days when such men were not so many as now. 

Nevertheless Platina did a certain justice to his perse- 
cutor. "He built magnificently," he says, "splendidly in 
St. Marco, and in the Vatican." The Church of St. Marco 
is close to the Palazzo Venezia where Paul chiefly lived ; he 
had taken his title as Cardinal from his native saint. Both 
20 



562 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

in St. Peter's and in the Vatican he carried on the works 
begun by his predecessors, and though he was unkind to 
the scholars, he was not so in every case. " He expended 
his money liberally enough," says Platina, "giving freely 
to poor Cardinals and bishops, and to princes and persons 
of noble houses when cast out of their homes, and especially 
to poor women and widows, and the sick who had no one 
else to think of them. And he also took great trouble to 
secure that corn and other things necessary to life should 
be furnished in abundance, and at lower prices than had 
been known ever before." These were good and noble quali- 
ties which his enemy did not attempt to disguise. 

The special service done by Pope Paul to the city would 
seem, however, to have been the restoration of some of 
those ancient monuments which belonged to imperial Rome, 
of which none of his predecessors had made much account. 
If he still helped himself freely, like them, from the great 
reservoir of the Colosseum, he bestowed an attention and 
care, which they had not dreamed of, upon some of the 
great works of classic art, the arches of Titus and of Septi- 
mus Severus in particular, and the famous statue of Marcus 
Aurelius. M. Muntz comments with much spirit on the 
reason why this Pope's works of restoration have been so 
little celebrated. His taste was toward sculpture rather 
than painting. "To the eyes of the world," says the his- 
torian of the arts, "the smallest fresco is of more account 
than the finest monuments of architecture, or of sculpture. 
Nicolas V. did better for his fame in engaging Fra Angelico 
than in undertaking the reconstruction of St. Peter's. Pius 
II. owes a sort of posthumous celebrity to the paintings in 
the library of the cathedral of Sienna." 

The same classical tastes of which he thus gave token 
made Pope Paul a great collector of bronzes, cameos, medals, 
intaglios, the smaller precious objects of ancient art; the 
love of which he was the first to bring back as a special 



ii.] CALIXTUS III., PIUS II., PAUL II., SIXTUS IV. 563 

study and pursuit. His collection of these was wonderful 
for his time, and great for any time. All the other adorn- 
ments of ancient art were clear to him, and his palace, 
which, after all, is his most complete memorial in Rome, 
was adorned like a bride with every kind of glory in carved 
and inlaid work, in vessels of gold and silver, embroideries 
and tapestries. He had the still more personal and indi- 
vidual characteristic of a love for fine clothes, which the 
gorgeous costumes of the popedom permitted him to indulge 
in to a large extent : and jewels, which he not only wore 
like an Eastern prince, but kept about him unset in drawers 
and cabinets for his private delight, playing with them, as 
Platina tells us, in the silent hours of the night. Some 
part at least of these magnificent tastes arose no doubt 
from the fact that he was himself a magnificent specimen 
of manhood, so distinguished in personal appearance that 
he had the naive vanity of suggesting the name of Formosus 
for himself when elected Pope, though he yielded the point 
to the scandalised remonstrances of the Cardinals. This 
simplicity of self-admiration, so undoubting as to be almost 
a moral quality, no doubt gave meaning to the glorious 
mitres and tiara encrusted with the richest jewels, which 
it gave him so much pleasure to wear, and which take rank 
with the other great embellishments of Rome, though their 
object was more personal than official. The habits of his 
life were strange, for he slept during the day, and per- 
formed the duties of life during the night, the reason 
assigned for this being that he was tormented by a cough 
which prevented him from sleeping at the usual hours. 
" It was difficult to come to speech of him," Platina says, 
for this reason. " And when, after long waiting, he opened 
the door, you were obliged rather to listen than to speak ; 
for he was very copious and long in speaking. In every- 
thing he desired to be thought astute, and therefore his 
conversation was in very intricate and ambiguous language. 



564 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

He liked many sorts of viands on his table, all of the worst 
taste ; and took much pleasure in eating melons, crawfish, 
pastry, fish, and salt pork, from which, I believe, came the 
apoplexy from which he died." Thus the prejudices of his 
enemy penetrated the most private details of the Pope's 
life. The venom of hatred defeats itself and becomes 
ridiculous when carried so far. 

His fine collection was seized by his successor and broken 
up, as is the fate of such treasures ; and his works in St. 
Peter's, as we shall see, had much the same fate, along with 
the great works of his predecessor for the embellishment of 
the same building, all of which perished or were set aside 
in the fever of rebuilding which ensued. But there is still 
a sufficient memorial of him in the sombre magnificence of his 
Venetian palace, to recall to us the image of a true Renais- 
sance Pope, mingling the most exquisite tastes with the 
rudest, the perfection of personal vanity — for he loved to 
see himself in a procession, head and shoulders over all the 
people — with the likings of a gondolier. Thus we see him 
in the records of his contemporaries, watching from his win- 
dows the strange sports in the long street newly named the 
Corso, races of men and of horses, and carnival processions 
accompanied by all the cumbrous and coarse humour of the 
period ; or a stranger sight still, seated by night in his cabi- 
net turning over his wealth of sparkling stones, enjoying the 
glow of light in them and twinkle of many colours, while the 
big candles flared, or a milder light shone from the beaks of 
the silver lamps. Notwithstanding which strange humours, 
tastes, and vanities, he remains in all these records a striking 
and remarkable figure, no intellectualist, but an effective and 
notable man. 

It is not the intention of these chapters to enter at all into 
the political life of the Popes of this period. They were still 
a power in Christendom, perhaps no less so that the Papacy 
had ceased to maintain those great pretensions of being the 




w* 






Si „' Ill ' ' 




PIAZZA COLONNA. 



To face page 564. 



ii.] CALIXTUS III., PIUS II.; PAUL II., SIXTUS IV. 567 

final arbiter in all disputes among the nations. But the 
papal negotiations, as always, came to very little when not 
aided by the events which are in no man's hand. Matthias 
of Hungary, though supported by all the influence and coun- 
sels of Pope Paul, made little head against the heretical 
George Podiebrad of Bohemia, until death suddenly over- 
took that prince, and left a troubled kingdom without a 
head, at the mercy of the invaders, an event such as con- 
stantly occurred to overturn all combinations and form the 
crises of history under a larger providence than that of 
human effort. And Paul no more than Pius could move 
Christendom against the Turk, or form again, when all its 
elements had crumbled, and the inspiration of enthusiasm 
was entirely gone, a new crusade. So far as our purpose 
goes, however, the Venetian Palace, the Church of St. Marco 
attached to it, and certain portions of the Vatican, better 
represent the life of this Pope, to whom the picturesque 
circumstances of his life and the rancour of a disappointed 
man of letters have given a special place of his own in the 
long line, than any summary we could give of the agitated 
sea of continental politics. The history of Borne was work- 
ing up to that climax, odious, dazzling, and terrible, to which 
the age of the Benaissance, with all its luxury, its splendour, 
and its vice, brought the great city, and even the Church 
so irrevocably bound to it. Nicolas, Pius, and Paul at the 
beginning of that rjeriod, yet but little affected by its worst 
features, give us a pause of satisfaction before we get 
further. They were very different men. Pope Nicolas, 
with his crowd of copyists forming a ragged regiment after 
him, and the noise of all the workshops in his ears ; and 
Paul, alone in his chamber pouring from one hand to 
another the stream of glowing and sparkling jewels which 
threw out radiance like the waterways of his own Venice 
under the light, afford images as unlike as it is possible to 
conceive ; while the wise and thoughtful Pius, with those 



568 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME, [chap. 

eyes " which had kept watch o'er man's mortality," stands 
over both, the perennial spectator and commentator of the 
world. They were all of one mind to glorify Rome, to make 
her a wonder in the whole earth, as Jerusalem had been, if 
not to pave her streets with gold, yet to line them with noble 
edifices more costly than gold, and to build and adorn the first 
of Christian churches, the shrine to which every Christian 
came. Alas ! by that time it was beginning to be visible that 
all Christians would not long continue to come to the one 
shrine, that the pictorial age of symbols and representations 
was dying away, and that Rome had not learned at all how 
to meet that great revolution. It was not likely to be met 
by even the most splendid restoration of the fated city, any 
more than the necessities of the people were to be met by 
those other resurrections of institutions dead and gone, at- 
tempted by Rienzi, and his still less successful copyist Por- 
caro ; but how were these men to know ? They did their 
best, the worst of them not without some noble meaning, at 
least at the beginning of their several careers ; but they are 
all reduced to their place, so much less important than they 
believed, by the large sweep of history, and the guidance of 
a higher hand. 

Paul II. died in August 1471. Another order of man now 
succeeded these remarkable personages, the first of the line 
of purely secular princes, men of the world, splendid, un- 
principled, and more or less vicious, although in this case 
it is once more a peasant, without so much as a surname, 
Sixtus IV., who takes his place in the scene, and who has left 
his name more conspicuously than any of his predecessors 
upon the later records of Rome. So far as the reader is 
concerned, the inscription at the end of the life of Pope 
Paul is a more melancholy one than anything that concerns 
that Pope. " Fin qui, scrisse il Platina," says the legend. 
We miss in the after-records his individual touch, the hand 
of the contemporary, in which the frankness of the chroni- 



ii.] CALIXTUS III., PIUS II., PAUL II., SIXTUS IV. 569 

cler is modified by the experience and knowledge of an 
educated mind. The work of Panvinio, scriba del Senato 
epopolo Romano, who completes the record, is without the 
same charm. 

We have said that Pope Sixtus IV. was a man without a 
surname, Francesco of Savona, his native place furnishing 
his only patronymic : but there was soon found for him — 
probably for the satisfaction of the nephews who took so 
large a place in his life — a name which bore some credit, 
that of a family of gentry in which it is said the young 
monk had fulfilled the duties of tutor in the beginning of 
his career. By what imaginary pedigree this was brought 
about we are not told ; but it is unlikely that the real della 
Koveres would reject the engrafting of a great Pope into 
their stock, and it soon became a name to conjure with 
throughout Italy. Although he also vaguely made pro- 
posals about a Crusade, and languidly desired to drive 
back the Turk, he was a man much more interested in the 
internal squabbles of Italy, and in his plans for endowing 
and establishing his nephews, than in any larger purpose. 
But he was also a man of boundless energy and power, cooped 
up for the greater part of his life, but now bursting forth 
like the strong current of a river. Whether it was from a 
natural inclination towards beauty and splendour, or because 
he saw it to be the best way in which to distinguish himself 
and make his own name as well as that of his city glorious, 
matters little to the result. He was, in the fullest sense of 
the words, one of the chiefest of the Popes who made the 
modern city of Koine, as still existing and glorious in the 
sight of all the world. 

It was still a confused and disorderly place, in which 
narrow streets and tortuous ways, full of irregularities and 
projections of all kinds, threaded through the large and 
pathetic desert of the ancient city, leaving a rim of ruin 
round the too-closely clustered centre of life where men 



570 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

crowded together for security and warmth after the custom 
of the mediaeval age — when Sixtus began to reign; and 
this it was which specially impressed King Ferdinand of 
Naples when he paid his visit to the Pope in the year 1475, 
and had to be led about by Cardinals and other high offi- 
cials, sometimes, it would appear, by his Holiness himself, 
to see the sights. The remarks he made upon the town 
were very useful if not quite civil to the seat of Eoman in- 
fluence and authority. Infessura gives this little incident 
vividly, so that we almost see the streets with their outer 
stairs crowded with bystanders, their balconies laden with 
bright tapestries and fair women, and every projecting gable 
and pillared doorway pushing out into the pavement at its 
own unfettered will. The course of sightseeing followed by 
the King, conducted by the Pope and Cardinals, is fully set 
forth in these quaint pages. King Ferrante came to make 
his devotions alio perdono, probably the Jubilee of 1475, and 
offered to each of the three churches of St. Peter, St. John 
Lateran, and St. Paul, a pallium of gold for each, besides 
many other gifts. 

"He went over all Rome to see the great buildings, and to Santa 
Maria Rotonda, and the columns of Antonius and of Trajan ; and 
every man did him great honour. And when he had seen all these 
things he turned back to the palace, and talking to Pope Sixtus said 
that he (the Pope) could never be the lord of the place, nor ever truly 
reign over it, because of the porticoes and balconies which were in the 
streets ; and that if it were ever necessary to put men at arms in 
possession of Rome the women in the balconies, with small bombs, 
could make them fly ; and that nothing could be more easy than to 
make barricades in the narrow streets ; and he advised him to clear 
away the balconies and the porticoes and to widen the streets, under 
pretence of improving and embellishing the city. The Pope took this 
advice, and as soon as it was possible cast down all those porticoes, and 
balconies, and widened the ways under pretence of improving them. 
And the said King remained there three days, and then went away." 

This story and the spirit in which the suggestion was 
made recall Napoleon's grim whiff of grapeshot, and the 
policy which has made the present Paris a city of straight 



ii.] CALIXTUS in.. PIUS IL. PAUL LT.. SIXTUS IT. "71 

lines which a battery of artilley could clear in a moment, in- 
stead of all the elbows and corners of the old picturesque 
streets. Pope Sixtus appreciated the suggestion, knowing 
how undisciplined a city he had to deal with, and what a good 
thing it might be to fill up those hornets' nests, with all their 
capabilities of offence. Probably a great many picturesque 
dwellings perished in the destruction of those centres of 
rebellion, which recall to us so vividly the scenes in which 
Pienzi the tribune fluttered through his little day. and which 
were continually filled with the rustle and tumult of an 
abounding populace. TV~e cannot be so grateful to King 
Ferdinand, or so full of praise for this portion of the work 
of Pope Sixtus. as were his contemporaries, though no doubt 
it gave to us almost all the leading thoroughfares we know. 
It was reserved for his kinsman-Pope to strike Some the 
severest stroke that was possible, and commit the worst : 
iconoclasms : but we do not doubt that the destruction of 
the porches, and stairheads, and balconies must have greatly 
di min ished the old-world attraction of a city — in which, 
however, it was the mediaeval with all its irregularities that 
was the intruder, while what was new in the hand of Sixtus 
and his architects linked itself in sympathy with the most 
ancient, the originator yet survivor of all. 

It was with the same purpose and intentions that the 
Pope built in place of the Ponte Eotto — which had lain 
long in ruins — a bridge over the Tiber, which he called by 
his own name, and which still remains, affording a second 
means of reaching the Borgo and the Sanctuaries, as a relief 
to the bridge of St. Angelo, upon which serious accidents 
were apt to happen by reason of the crowd. Both the 
chroniclers. Infessura and Panvinio. the continuator of 
Platina, describe the bridge as being a rebuilding of the 
actual Ponte Potto itself. " It was his intention to mend 
this bridge," says the former authority, and he takes the 
opportunity to point out the presumptuous and proud at- 



572 THE MAKERS OE MODERN ROME. [chap. 

tempt of Sixtus to preserve his own name and memory by- 
it, a fault already committed by several of bis predecessors ; 
"he accordingly descended to the river and placed in the 
foundations by the said bridge a square stone on which was 
written: Sixtus Quartus Pontifex Maximus fecit fieri sub 
Anno Domini 1473. Behind this stone the Pope placed 
certain gold medals bearing his head, and afterwards built 
that bridge, which after this was no longer called Ponte 
Rotto, but Ponte Sisto, as is written on it." ' It is a won- 
derful point of view, commanding as it does both sides of 
the river, St. Peter's on one hand and the Palatine on the 
other, with all the mass of buildings which are Rome. The 
Scritte on the Ponte Sisto begs the prayers of the passer-by 
for its founder, who certainly had need of them both for 
his achievements in life and in architecture. There is still, 
however, a Ponte Rotto further up the stream. 

Besides the work of widening the streets, which neces- 
sitated much pulling down and rebuilding of houses, and 
frequent encounters with the inhabitants, who naturally 
objected to proceedings so summary — and removing the 
excrescences, balconies, and porticoes, "which occupied, 
obscured, and made them ugly (brutte) and disorderly : " 
Pope Sixtus rebuilt the great Hospital of the Santo Spirito, 
which had fallen into disrepair, providing shelter in the 
meantime for the patients who had to be removed from it, 
and arranging for the future in the most grandfatherly 
way. This great infirmary is also a foundling hospital, 
and there was a large number of children to provide for. 
" Seeing that many children both male and female along 
with their nurses were thrown out on the world, he assigned 
them a place where they could live, and ordained that the 
marriageable girls should be portioned and honestly mar- 
ried, and that the others who would not marry should 
become the nurses of the sick. He also arranged that 
there should be (in the new hospital) more honourable 



ii.] CALIXTUS III., PIUS II., PAUL II., SIXTUS IV. 578 

rooms and better furnished for sick gentle-folks, so that 
they might be kept separate from the common people " : 
an arrangement which is one of the things (like so many 
ancient expedients) on which we now pride ourselves as an 
invention of our own age, though the poor gentle-folks of 
Pope Sisto were not apparently made to pay for their privi- 
leges. This hospital in some of its details is considered the 
most meritorious of the Pope's architectural work. 

Sixtus IV. was a man of the most violent temper, which 
led him into some curious scenes which have become his- 
torical. When one of the unfortunate proprietors of a 
house which stood in the way of his improvements resisted 
the workmen, Sixtus had him cast into prison on the 
moment, and savagely stood by to see the house pulled 
down before he would leave the spot. He delighted, the 
chroniclers say, in the ruins he made. A more tragic 
instance of his rage was the judicial murder of the Proto- 
notary Colonna, who paid with his life for crossing the will 
of the Pope. But this masterful will and impetuous tem- 
per secured an incredible swiftness in the execution of his 
work. 

The prudent suggestion of Ferdinand resulted in the 
clearance of those straight streets which led from the Fla- 
minian Gate — now called the Porta del Popolo, which 
Sixtus built or restored, as well as the church of Sta. Maria 
del Popolo, which stands close by — to all the principal 
places in the city ; the Corso being the way to the Capitol, 
the Ripetta to St. Angelo and the Borgo. He repaired once 
more the church and ancient palace of the Lateran, which 
had so long been the home of the Popes, and was still for- 
mally their diocesan church to which they went in state 
after their election. It is unnecessary, however, to give here 
a list of the many churches which he repaired or rebuilt. 
His work was Eome itself, and pervaded every part, from 
St. Peter's and the Vatican to the furthest corners of the 



574 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

city. The latter were, above all, the chief objects of his 
care, and he seems to have taken up with even a warmer 
ardour, if perhaps with a less cultivated intelligence, the 
plan of Nicolas V. in respect to the Palace at least. Like 
him he gathered a crowd of painters, chiefly strangers, 
around him, so that there is scarcely a great name of the 
time that does not appear in his lists ; but he managed 
these great craftsmen personally like a slave-driver, push- 
ing them on to a breathless speed of execution, so that 
the works produced for him are more memorable for their 
extent than for their perfection. 

The fame of a sanitary reformer before his time seems an 
unlikely one for Pope Sixtus, yet he seems to have had no 
inconsiderable right to it. Nettare and purgare are two 
words in constant use in the record of his life. He restored 
to efficient order the Cloaca Maxima. He brought in, a 
more beautiful office, the Acqua Vergine, a name of itself 
enough to glorify any master-builder, " remaking," says the 
chronicler, " the aqueducts, which were in ruins, from Monte 
Pincio to the fountain of Trevi." Here is perhaps a better 
reason for blessing Pope Sixtus than even his bridge, for 
those splendid and abundant waters which convey coolness 
and freshness and pleasant sound into the very heart of 
Eome were brought hither by his hand, a gift which may 
be received without criticism, for not upon his name lies 
the guilt of the prodigious construction, a creation of the 
eighteenth century, through which they now flow. The 
traveller from the ends of the earth who takes his draught 
of this wonderful unfailing fountain, rejoicing in the sparkle 
and the flow of water so crystal-clear and cold even in the 
height of summer, and hoping to secure as he does so his 
return to Rome, may well pour a libation to Papa Sisto, 
who, half pagan as they all were in those days, would prob- 
ably have liked that form of recollection quite as much as 
the prayers he invokes according to the formal requirements 



ii.] CALIXTUS HI, PIUS II., PAUL II., SIXTUS IV. 575 

of piety and the custom of the Church. However, they 
found it quite easy to combine the two during that strange 
age. The chief thing of all, however, which perpetuates 
the name of Sixtus is the famous Sistine chapel, although 
its chief attraction is not derived from anything ordained 
by him. Some of the greatest names in art were concerned 
in its earlier decorations — Perugino, Botticelli, Ghirlandajo, 
along with many others. Michael Angelo was not yet, 
neither had Raphael appeared from the Umbrian bottega 
with his charm of grace and youth. But the Pope collected 
the greatest he could find, and set them to work upon his 
newly-built walls with a magnificence and liberality which 
deserved a more lasting issue. The reader will shiver, yet 
almost laugh with consternation and wonder, to hear that 
several great pictures of Perugino were destroyed on these 
walls by the orders of another Pope in order to make room 
for Michael Angelo. There could not be a more character- 
istic token of the course of events in the Papal succession, 
and of the wanton waste and destruction by one of the most 
cherished work of another. 

Sixtus was none the less a warlike prince, struggling in 
perpetual conflict with the princes of the other states, per- 
haps with even a fiercer strain of ambition, fighting for 
wealth and position with which to endow the young men 
who were as his sons — as worldly in his aims as any Mala- 
testa or Sforza, as little scrupulous about his means of 
carrying them out, shedding blood or at least permitting it 
to be shed in his name, extorting money, selling offices, 
trampling upon the rights of other men. Yet amid all 
these distractions he pursued his nobler work, not without 
a wish for the good of his people as well as for his own 
ends, making his city more habitable, providing a lordly 
habitation for the sick, pouring floods of life-giving water 
into the hot and thirsty place. The glory of building may 
have many elements of vanity in it as well as the formation 



576 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

of galleries of art, and the employment of all the greatest 
art-workmen of their time. But ours is the advantage in 
these latter respects, so that we may well judge charitably 
a man who, in devising great works for his own honour and 
pleasure, has at the same time endowed us, and especially 
his country and people, with a lasting inheritance. Per- 
haps, even in competition with these, it is most to his credit 
that he fulfilled offices which did not so much recommend 
themselves to his generation, and cleansed and cleared out 
and let in air and light like any modern sanitary reformer. 
The Acqua Vergine and the Santo Spirito Hospital are 
as fine things as even a Botticelli for a great prince's fame. 
He may even be forgiven the destruction of the balconies 
and all the picturesque irregularities which form the charm 
of ancient streets, in consideration of the sewerage and the 
cleaning out. The pictures, the libraries, and all the more 
beautiful things of life, in which we of the distant lands 
and centuries have our share of benefit, are good deeds 
which are not likely to be forgotten. 

It is however naturally the beautiful things of which 
it is most pleasant to think. The chroniclers, whom we 
love to follow, curiously enough, have nothing to say about 
the pictures, perhaps because it was not an art favoured by 
the Romans, or which they themselves pursued, except in 
its lower branches. Infessura mentions a certain Antonazzo 
Pintore, who was the author of a Madonna, painted on the 
wall near the church of Sta. Maria, below the Capitol at 
the foot of the hill, which on the 26th of June, in the year 
1470, began to do miracles, and was afterwards enshrined 
in a church dedicated to our Lady of Consolations. Anto- 
nazzo was a humble Roman artist, whose name is to be found 
among the workmen in the service of Pope Paul II., who 
was not much given to pictures. Perhaps he is mentioned 
because he was a Roman, more likely because he had the 
good luck to produce a miraculous Madonna. The same 



ii.] CALIXTUS III., PIUS II., PAUL II., SIXTUS IV. 577 

writer makes passing mention of I Fiorentini, under which. 
generic name all the bottegas were included. 

" He renewed the Palace of the Vatican, drawing it forth 
under great colonnades," says, picturesquely, the chronicler 
Panvinio, working probably from Platina's notes, "and mak- 
ing under his chapel a library " : which was the finest thing 
of all, for he there reinstated Platina, who had been kept 
under so profound a shadow in the time of Paul II., and 
called back the learned men whom his predecessor had dis- 
couraged, sending far and near through all Europe for books, 
and thus enlarging the library begun by Pope Nicolas which 
is one of the most celebrated which the world possesses, 
and to which he secured a revenue, " enough to enable those 
who had the care of it to live, and even to buy more books." 
This provision still exists, though it is no longer sufficient 
for the purpose for which it was dedicated. The Cardinals 
emulated the Pope both in palace and church, each doing 
his best to leave behind him some building worthy of his 
name. Ornament abounded everywhere ; sometimes rather 
of a showy than of a refined kind. There is a story in 
Vasari of how one of the painters employed on the Sistine, 
competing for a prize which the Pope had offered, piled on 
his colours beyond all laws of taste or harmony, and was 
laughed at by his fellows ; but proved the correctness of his 
judgment by winning the prize, having gauged the knowl- 
edge and taste of Sixtus better than the others whose at- 
tempt had been to do their best — a height entirely beyond 
his grasp. 

All these buildings, however, were fatal to the remnants 
still existing of ancient Borne. The Colosseum and the 
other great relics of antiquity were still the quarries out 
of which the new erections were built. The Sistine Bridge 
was founded upon huge blocks of travertine brought di- 
rectly from the ruins of the Colosseum. The buildings 
of the Imperial architects thus melted away as we are told 

2 P 



578 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

now everything in the world does, our own bodies among 
the rest, into new combinations, under a law which if just 
and universal in nature is not willingly adopted in art. The 
wonder is how they should have supplied so many succes- 
sive generations, and still remain even to the extent they 
still do. Every building in Rome owes something to the 
Colosseum — its stones were sold freely in earlier ages, and 
carried off to the ends of the earth; but it has remained 
like the widow's cruse, inexhaustible : which is almost more 
wonderful than the fact of its constant use. 

There is a picture in the Vatican gallery, which though 
not one of the highest merit is very interesting from a his- 
torical point of view. We quote the description of it from 
Bishop Creighton. 

' ' It represents Sixtus IV. founding the Vatican library. The Pope 
with a face characterised by mingled strength and coarseness, his 
hands grasping the arms of his chair, sits looking at Platina, who kneels 
before him, a man whose face is that of a scholar, with square jaw, 
thin lips, finely cut mouth, and keen glancing eye. Cardinal Giuliano 
stands like an official who is about to give a message to the Pope, by 
whose side is Pietro Riario with aquiline nose and sensual chin, red- 
cheeked and supercilious. Behind Platina is Count Girolamo with a 
shock of black hair falling over large black eyes, his look contempt- 
uous and his mien imperious." 

These were the three men for whom the Pontiff fought 
and struggled and soiled his hands with blood, and sold his 
favour to the highest bidder. Giuliano clella Rovere and 
Pietro Biario were Cardinals :• Count Girolamo or Jeronimo 
was worse — he was of the rudest type of the predatory 
baron, working out a fortune for himself with the sword, 
the last man in the world to be the henchman of a Pope. 
They were but one step from the peasant race, without dis- 
tinction or merit which had given them birth, and all three 
built upon that rude stock the dissolute character and grasp- 
ing greed for money, acquired by every injustice, and ex- 
pended on every folly, which was so common in their time. 
They were all young, intoxicated with their wonderful sue- 



ii.] CALIXTUS III., PIUS II., PAUL II., SIXTUS IV. 579 

cess and with every kind of extravagance to be provided for. 
They made Rome glitter and glow with pageants, always so 
congenial to the taste of the people, seizing every opportu- 
nity of display and magnificence. Infessnra tells the story 
of one of these wonderful shows, with a mixture of admira- 
tion and horror. The Cardinal of San Sisto, he tells us, who 
was Pietro Riario, covered the whole of the Piazza of the 
Santi Apostoli, and hung it with cloth of arras, and above 
the portico of the church erected a fine loggia with panels 

painted by the Florentines for the festa of San (the 

good Infessura forgets the name with a certain contempt one 
cannot but feel for the foreign painters and their works), 
and in front made two fountains which threw water very 
high, as high as the roof of the church. This wonderful 
arrangement was intended for the delectation of the royal 
guest Madonna Leonora, daughter of King Ferrante for 
whom he and his cousin Girolamo made a great feast. 

" After the above banquet was seen one of the finest things that 
were ever seen in Rome or out of Rome : for between the banquet and 
the festa, several thousands of ducats were spent. There was erected 
a buffet with so much silver upon it as you would never have believed 
the Church of God had so much, in addition to that which was used at 
table : and even the things to eat were gilt, and the sugar used to 
make them was without measure, more than could be believed. And 
the said Madonna Leonora was in the aforesaid house with many 
demoiselles and baronesses. And every one of these ladies had a 
washing basin of gold given her by the Cardinal. Oh guarda ! in such 
things as these to spend the treasure of the Church ! " 

Next year the Cardinal Riario died at twenty-eight, " poi- 
soned," Infessura says : " and this was the end of all our 
fine festas.',' Another day it was the layman among the 
nephews who stirred all Rome, and the world beyond, with 
an immeasurable holiday. 

"On St. Mark's Day, 1746, the Count Jeronimo, son, or nephew of 
Pope Sixtus, held a solemn tournament in Navona, where were many 
valiant knights of Italy and much people, Catalans and Burgundians 
and other nations; and it was believed that at this festivity there were 
more than a hundred thousand people, and it lasted over Friday, 



580 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [en. n. 

Saturday, and Sunday. And there were three prizes, one of which 
was won by Juliano Matatino, and another by Lucio Poncello, and 
the third by a man of arms of the Kingdom (Naples, so called until 
very recent days), and they were of great value." 

The Piazza Navona, the scene of this tournament, was 
made by Pope Sixtus the market-place of Rome, where mar- 
kets were held once a month, an institution which still con- 
tinues. The noble Pantheon occupies the end of this great 
square, as when Count Jeronimo with his black brows, mar- 
shalled his knights within the long enclosure, so fit for such 
a sight. We have now come to a period of history in which 
all the localities are familiar, and where we can identify 
every house and church and tower. 

" Sixtus," says the chronicler, " left nothing undone which 
he saw to be for the ornament or comfort of the city. He 
defended intrepidly the cause of the Romans and the dignity 
of the Holy See." The first of these statements is more true 
perhaps than the last ; and we may forgive him his short- 
comings and his nephews on that great score. He ended his 
reign in August 1484, having held the Pontificate thirteen 
years. 







FOUNTAIN OF TREVI. 



CHAPTEE III. 



JULIUS II. LEO X. 



IT is happily possible to pass over the succeeding pon- 
tificates of Innocent VIII. and Alexander VI. These 
Eopes did little for Eome except, especially the last of 
them, to associate the name of the central city of Christen- 
dom with every depravity. The charitable opinion of later 
historians who take that pleasure in upsetting all previous 
notions, which is one of the features of our time, has begun 
to whisper that even the Borgias were not so black as they 

581 



582 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

were painted. But it will take a great deal of persuasion 
and of eloquence to convince the world that there is any- 
thing to be said for that name. Pope Innocent VIII. con- 
tinued the embellishment of the Vatican, which was his 
own palace, and completed the Belvedere, and set Andrea 
Mantegna to paint its chambers ; but this was not more 
than any Roman nobleman might have done for his palace 
if he had had money enough for decorations, which were 
by no means so costly in those days as they would be now, 
and probably indeed were much cheaper than the more mag- 
nificent kinds of arras or other decerative stuffs fit for a 
Pope's palace. Alexander, too, added a splendid apartment 
for himself, still known by his name ; and provided for pos- 
sible danger (which did not occur however in his day) by 
making and decorating another apartment in the castle of 
St. Angelo, whither he might have retired and still managed 
to enjoy himself, had Borne risen against him. But Borne, 
which often before had hunted its best Popes into the 
strait confinement of that stronghold, left the Borgia at 
peace. We are glad to pass on to the next Pope, whose 
footsteps, almost more than those of any other of her mon- 
archs, are still to be seen and recognised through Borne. 
He gave more to the city than any one who had preceded 
him, and he destroyed more than any Pope before had per- 
mitted himself to do. 

Julius II., della Bovere, the nephew of Pope Sixtus, for 
whom and for his brother and cousin that Pope occupied so 
much of his busy life, was a violent man of war, whose 
whole life was occupied in fighting, and who neither had 
nor pretended to have any reputation for sanctity or devo- 
tion. But passionate and unsparing as he was, and fiercely 
bent on his own way, the aim of his perpetual conflicts was 
at all events a higher one than that of his uncle, in so far 
that it was to enrich the Church and not his own family 
that he toiled and fought. He was the centre of warlike 



in.] JULIUS II. — LEO X. 583 

combinations all his life — League of Cambrai, holy League, 
every kind of concerted fighting to crush those who opposed 
him and to divide their goods ; but the portion of the goods 
which fell to the share of Pope Julius was for the Church 
and not for the endowment of a sister's son. He was not 
insensible altogether to the claims of sister's sons ; but he 
preferred on the whole the patrimony of St. Peter, and 
fought for that with unfailing energy all round. There are 
many books in which the history of those wars and of the 
Renaissance Popes in general may be read in full, but the 
Julius II. in whom we are here interested is not one who 
ever led an army or signed an offensive league : it is the 
employer of Bramante and Michael Angelo and Raphael, 
the choleric patron who threatened to throw the painter of 
the Sistine chapel from his scaffolding, the dreadful icono- 
clast who pulled down St. Peter's and destroyed the tombs 
of the Popes, the magnificent prince who bound the greatest 
artists then existing in Italy, which was to say in the world, 
to his chariot wheels, and drove them about at his will. 
Most of these things were good things, and give a favour- 
able conception of him ; though not that which was the 
most important of all. 

How it was that he came to pull down St. Peter's no- 
body can say. He had of course the contempt which a 
man, carried on the highest tide of a new movement, has 
by nature for all previous waves of impulse. He thought 
of the ancient building so often restored, the object of so 
much loving care, with all the anxious expedients employed 
by past Popes to glorify and embellish the beloved interior, 
giving it the warmest and most varied historical interest — 
with much the same feeling as the respectable church- 
warden in the eighteenth century looked upon the piece of 
old Gothic which had fallen into his hands. A church of 
the fourteenth century built for eternity has always looked 
to the churchwarden as if it would tumble about his ears — 



584 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

and his Herculean efforts to pull down an arch that without 
him would have stood till the end of time have always been 
interpreted as meaning that the ancient erection was about 
to fall. Julius II. in the same way announced St. Peter's to 
be in a bad way and greatly in need of repair, so as scarcely 
to be safe for the faithful; and Bramante was there all 
ready with the most beautiful plans, and the Pope was not 
a patient man who would wait, but one who insisted upon 
results at once. This church had been for many hundreds 
of years the most famous of Christian shrines ; from the 
ends of the world pilgrims had sought its altars. The 
tomb of the Apostles was its central point, and many 
another saint and martyr inhabited its sacred places. It 
had seen the consecration of Emperors, it had held false 
Popes and true, and had witnessed the highest climax of 
triumph for some, and for some the last solemnity of death. 1 
But Bramante saw in that venerable temple only the foun- 
dations for a new cathedral after the fashion of the great 
Duomo which was the pride of Florence; and his master 
beheld in imagination the columns rising, and the vast 
arches growing, of such an edifice as would be the brag 
of Christendom, and carry the glory of his own name to 
the furthest ends of the earth: a temple all-glorious in 
pagan pride, more classical than the classics, adorned with 
great statues and blank magnificence of pilasters and tombs 
rising up to the roof — one tomb at least, that of the della 
Eoveres, of Sixtus IV. and Julius II., which should live as 
long as history, and which, if that proud and petulant fel- 
low Buonarotti would but complete his work, would be one 
of the glories of the Eternal City. 

The ancient St. Peter's would not seem to have had any- 
thing of the poetic splendour and mystery of a Gothic build- 
ing as understood in northern countries : the rounded arches 
of its facade did not spring upwards with the lofty light- 
1 See the death of Pope Leo IX., p. 199. 




s 






in.] JULIUS II. — LEO X. 587 

ness and soaring grace of the great cathedrals of France 
and Germany. But the irregular front was full of interest 
and life, picturesque if not splendid. It had character and 
meaning in every line, it was a series of erections, carrying 
the method of one century into another, with that art which 
makes one great building into an animated and varied his- 
tory of the times and ages through which it has passed, 
taking something from each, and giving shelter and the 
sense of continuance to all. There is no such charm as 
this in the most perfect of architectural triumphs executed 
by a single impulse. But this was the last quality in the 
world likely to deter a magnificent Pope of the fifteenth 
century, to whom unity of conception and correctness of 
form were of much more concern than any such imaginative 
interest. However Julius II. must not have greater guilt 
laid upon him than was his due. His operations concerned 
only the eastern part of the great church : the facade, and 
the external effect of the building remained unchanged for 
more than a hundred years ; while the plan as now be- 
lieved, was that of Pope Nicolas V., only carried out by 
instalments by his successors, of whom Julius was one of 
the boldest. 

It is, however, in the fame of his three servants, sublime 
slaves, whose names are more potent still than those of any 
Pontiff, that this Pope has become chiefly illustrious. His 
triumphs of fighting are lost from memory in the pages of 
the historians, where we read and forget, the struggle he 
maintained in Italy, and the transformations through which 
that much troubled country passed under his sway — to 
change again the morrow after, as it had changed the day 
before the beginning of his career. To be sure it was he 
who finally identified and secured the Patrimony of St. 
Peter — so that the States of the Church were not hence- 
forward lost and won by a natural succession of events 
once at least in the life of every Pope. But we forget that 



588 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

fact, and all that secured it, the tumultuous chaos of Euro- 
pean affairs being as yet too dark to be penetrated by any 
certainty of consolidation. The course of events was in 
large what the history of the fortunes of St. John Lateran, 
for example, was in small. From the days of Pope Mar- 
tin V. until those of Sixtus IV. a change of the clergy 
there was made in almost each pontificate. Eugenius IV. 
restored the canons regular, or monks : who were driven 
forth by Calixtus III., again restored by Paul II., and so 
forth, until at length Sixtus, bringing back the secular 
priests for the third time, satisfied the monks by the gift 
of his new church of Sta. Maria della Pace. The revolu- 
tion of affairs in Italy was almost as regular, and it is only 
with an effort of the mind that the reader can follow the 
endless shifting of the scenes, the combinations that dis- 
perse and reassemble, the whirl of events for ever coming 
round again to the point from which they started. But 
when we put aside the Popes and the Princes and the 
stamping and tumult of mail-clad warriors — and the crowd 
opening on every side gives us to see a patient, yet high- 
tempered artisan mounting day by day his lofty platform, 
swung up close to the roof, where sometimes lying on his 
back, sometimes crouched upon his knees, he made roof 
and architrave eloquent with a vision which centuries can- 
not fade, nor any revolution, either of external affairs or 
of modes of thought, lessen in interest, a very different 
feeling fills the mind, and the thoughts, which were sick 
and weary with the purposeless and dizzy whirl of fact, 
come back relieved to the consoling permanence of art. 
The Pope who mounted imperious, a master of the world, 
on to those dizzy planks, admired, and blasphemed and 
threatened in a breath; but with no power to move the 
sturdy painter, who, it was well known, was a man impos- 
sible to replace. " When will you have done ? " said the 
Pope. "When I can," replied the other. The Pontiff 



in.] JULIUS IT. — LEO X. 589 

might rage and threaten, but the Florentine painted on 
steadily ; and Pope Julius, on the tremulous scaffolding 
up against the roof of his uncle's chapel, is better known 
to the world by that scene than by all his victories. Uncle 
and nephew, both men of might, warlike souls and strong, 
that room in the Vatican has more share in their fame than 
anything else which they achieved in the world. 

Another and a gentler spirit comes in at the same time 
to glorify this fortunate Pope. His predecessors for some 
time back had each done something for the splendour of 
the dwelling which was their chief residence, even the 
least interested adding at least a loggia, a corridor, a villa 
in the garden, as has been seen, to make the Vatican glori- 
ous. Alexander VI. had been the last to embellish and 
extend the more than regal lodging of the Pontiffs ; but 
Julius II. had a hatred of his predecessor which all honest 
men have a right to share, and would not live in the rooms 
upon which the Borgias had left the horror of their name. 
He went back to the cleaner if simpler apartments which 
Nicolas V. had built and decorated by the hands of the 
elder painters. Upon one of these he set young Raphael 
to work, a young man with whom there was likely to be no 
such trouble as that he had with the gnarled and crabbed 
Florentine, who was as wilful as himself. Almost as soon 
as the young painter had begun his gracious work the de- 
lighted Pope perceived what a treasury of glory he had got 
in this new servant. What matter that the new painter's 
master, Perugino, had been there before him with other 
men of the highest claims ? The only thing to do was to 
break up these old-fashioned masters, to clear them away 
from the walls, to leave it all to Eaphael. We shiver and 
wonder at such a proof of enthusiasm. Was the young 
man willing to get space for his smooth ethereal pictures 
with all their heavenly grace, at such a price ? But if he 
made any remonstrance — which probably he did, for we 



590 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

see him afterwards in much trouble over St. Peter's, and 
the destruction carried on there — his imperious master 
took little notice. Julius was one of the men who had to 
be obeyed, and he was always as ready to pull down as to 
build up. The destruction of St. Peter's on one hand, and 
all those pictures on the other, prove the reckless and mas- 
terful nature of the man, standing at nothing in a matter 
on which he had set his heart. In later days the pictures 
of Perugino on the wall of the Sistine chapel were demol- 
ished, as has been said, to make place for the Last Judg- 
ment of Michael Angelo ; but Pope Julius by that -time 
had passed into another sphere. 

Most people will remember the famous portrait of this 
Pope by Raphael, one of the best known pictures in the 
world. He sits in his chair, an old man, his head slightly 
bowed, musing, in a pause of the endless occupations and 
energy which made his life so full. The portrait is quite 
simple, but full of dignity and a brooding power. We feel 
that it would not be well to rouse the old lion, though at 
the moment his repose is perfect. Raphael was at his ease 
in the peacefulness of his own soul to observe and to record 
the powerful master whose fame he was to have so great a 
share in making. It would have been curious to have had 
also the Julius whom Michael Angelo knew. 

He died in the midst of all this great work, while yet the 
dust of the downfall of St. Peter's was in the air. Had it been 
possible that he could have lived to see the new and splendid 
temple risen in its place, we could better understand the 
wonderful hardihood of the act; but it would be almost 
inconceivable how even the most impious of men could have 
executed such an impulse, leaving nothing but a partial ruin 
behind him of the great Shrine of Christendom, did we not 
know that a whole line of able rulers had carried on the plan 
to gradual completion. It was not till a hundred and fifty 
years later that the new St. Peter's in its present form, vast 



in.] JULIUS II. — LEO X. 591 

and splendid, but apparently framed to look, to the first 
glance, as little so as possible, stood complete, to the ad- 
miration of the world. In the violence of destruction a 
great number of the tombs of the Popes perished, by means 
of that cynical carelessness and profanity which is more 
cruel than any hostile impulse. Julius preserved the grave 
of his uncle Sixtus, where he was himself afterwards laid, 
not in his own splendid tomb which had been in the making 
for many years, and which is now to be seen in the church 
of San Pietro in Vincoli from which he took his Cardinal's 
title. He had therefore' little good of that work of art as 
he well deserved, and it was itself sadly diminished, cut 
down, and completed by various secondary hands ; but it is 
kept within the ken of the spectator by Michael Angelo's 
Moses and some other portions of his original work, though it 
neither enshrines the body nor marks the resting place of 
its imperious master. Julius died in 1513, " more illustrious 
in military glory than a Pope ought to be." Panvinio says : 
"He was of great soul and constancy, and a powerful defender 
of all ecclesiastical things : he would not suffer any offence, 
and was implacable with rebels and contumacious persons. 
He was such a one as could not but be praised for having 
with so much strength and fidelity preserved and increased 
the possessions of the Church, although there are a few 
to whom it appears that he was more given to arms than 
was becoming a holy Pope." "On the 21st of Pebruary 
1513, died Pope Julius, at nine hours of the night," says 
another chronicler, Sebastiano Branca ; " he held the papacy 
nine years, three months, and twenty-five days. He was 
from Savona : he acquired many lands for the Church : no 
Pope had ever done what Pope Julius did. The first was 
Faenza, the others Porli, Cervia, Ravenna, Rimini, Parma, 
Piacenza, and Arezzo. He gained them all for the Church, 
nor ever thought of giving them to his own family. Pesaro 
he gave to the Duke of Urbino, his nephew, but no other. 



592 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

Thirty -three cardinals died in his time . And he caused the 
death in war of more than a hundred thousand people." 
There could not be a more grim summary. 

It is curious to remark that the men who originated the 
splendour of modern Rome, who built its noblest churches 
and palaces, and emblazoned its walls with the noblest 
works of art, and filled its libraries with the highest luxury 
of books, were men of the humblest race, of peasant origin, 
born to poverty and toil. Thomas of Sarzana, Pope Nicolas 
V., Francesco and G-iuliano of Savona, Popes Sixtus IV. and 
Julius II. : these men were born without even the distinc- 
tion of a surname, in the huts where poor men lie, or more 
humbly still in some room hung high against the rocky 
foundations of a village, perched upon a cliff, after the fash- 
ion of Italy. It was they who set the fashion of a magnifi- 
cence beyond the dreams of the greatest princes of their time. 

It was not so, however, with the successor of Julius II., 
the Pope in whose name all the grandeur and magnificence 
of Rome is concentrated, and of whom we think most im- 
mediately when the golden age of ecclesiastical luxury and 
the splendour of art is named. Leo X. was as true a son 
of luxury as they were of the soil. The race of Medici has 
always been fortunate in its records. The greatest painters 
of the world have been at its feet, encouraged and cherished 
and tyrannised over. Literature such as was in the highest 
esteem in those days flattered and caressed and fawned upon 
them. Lorenzo, somewhat foolishly styled in history the 
Magnificent, — in f orgetfulness of the fact that il Magnifico 
was the common title of a Florentine official, — is by many 
supposed to be the most conspicuous and splendid character 
in the history of Florence. And Leo X. bears the same 
renown in the records of Papal Rome. We will not say 
that he was a modern Nero fiddling while Rome was burn- 
ing, for he showed himself in many ways an unusually 
astute politician, and as little disposed to let slip any tern- 




s 



%%>'+/&*:$* 



in.] JULIUS II. — LEO X. 595 

poral advantage as his fighting predecessors — but the spec- 
tacle is still a curious one of a man expending his life and 
his wealth (or that of other people) in what was even the 
most exquisite and splendid of decorations, such wonders 
of ornamentation as Raphael's frescoes — while the Papacy 
itself was being assailed by the greatest rebellion ever 
raised against it. To go on painting the walls while the 
foundations of the building are being ruined under your 
feet and at any moment may fall about your ears, reducing 
your splendid ornaments to powder, is a thing which gives 
the most curious sensation to the looker on. The world did 
not know in those days that even to an institution so corrupt 
superficially as the Church of Rome the ancient promise 
stood fast, and not only the .gates of hell, but those more 
like of heaven, should not prevail against her. Out of Italy 
it was believed that the Church which had but lately been 
ruled over by a Borgia, and which was admittedly full of 
wickedness in high places, must go down altogether under 
the tremendous blow. A great part of the world indeed 
went on believing so for a century or two. But in the 
midst of that almost universal conviction nothing can be 
more curious than to see the life of Papal Rome going on as 
if nothing had happened, and young Raphael and all his 
disciples coming and going, cheerful as the day, about the 
great empty chambers which they were making into a won- 
der of the earth. Michael Angelo, it is true, in grim dis- 
content hewed at those huge slaves of his in Florence, 
working wonderful thoughts into their great limbs ; but all 
that Roman world flowed on in brightness and in glory 
under skies untouched by any threatening of catastrophe. 
The Italian chroniclers scarcely so much as mention the 
beginnings of the Reformation. "At that time in the fur- 
thest part of Germany the abominable and infamous name 
of Martin Luther began to be heard," says one. The ele- 
phant which Emmanuel of Portugal sent to his Holiness, 



596 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

and which was supposed to be a thousand years old, takes 
up as much space. The sun shone on in Rome. The 
painters sang and whistled at their work, and their sublime 
patron went and came, and capped verses with Venetian 
Bembo, and the unique Aretino. They were not, it would 
seem, in the least afraid of Luther, nor even cognisant of 
him except in a faint and far-off way. He was so absurd 
as to object to the sale of indulgences. Now the sale of 
indulgences was not to be defended in theory, as all these 
philosophers knew. But to buy off the penances which 
otherwise they would at all events have been obliged to 
pretend to do, was a relief grateful to many persons who 
were not bad Christians, besides being good Catholics. Per- 
haps, indeed, in the gross popular imagination these indul- 
gences might have come to look like permissions to sin, as 
that monster in Germany asserted them to be ; but this did 
not really alter their true character, any more than other 
popular mistakes affected doctrine generally. And how 
to get on with that huge building of St. Peter's, at which 
innumerable workmen were labouring year after year, and 
which was the most terrible burden upon the Papal funds, 
without that method of wringing stone and mortar and gild- 
ing and mosaic out of the common people ? Pope Leo took 
it very easily. Notwithstanding the acquisitions of Pope 
Julius, and the certainty with which the historians assure 
us that from his time the Patrimony of St. Peter was well 
established in the possession of Rome, some portion of it 
had been lost again, and had again to be recovered in the 
days of his successor. That was doubtless more important 
than the name, nefando, execrabile of the German monk. 
And so the wars went on, though not with the spirit and 
relish which Julius II. had brought into them. Leo X. had 
no desire to kill anybody. When he was compelled to do it 
he did it quite calmly and inexorably as became a Medici ; 
but he took no pleasure in the act. If Luther had fallen 



in.] JULIUS II. — LEO X. 597 

into his hands the Curia would no doubt have found some 
means of letting the pestilent fellow off. A walk round the 
loggie or the stanze where the painters were so busy, and 
where Eaphael, a born gentleman, would not grumble as 
that savage Buonarotti did, at being interrupted, but would 
pause and smile and explain, put the thought of all trouble- 
some Germans easily out of the genial potentate's head. It 
was the Golden Age ; and Borne was the centre of the world 
as was meet, and genius toiled untiringly for the embellish- 
ment of everything; and such clever remarks had never 
been made in any court, such witty suggestions, such fine 
language used and subtle arguments held, as those of all the 
scholars and all the wits who vied with each other for the 
ear and the glance of Bope Leo. The calm enjoyment of 
life over a volcano was never exhibited in such perfection 
before. 

We need not pause here to enumerate or describe those 
works which every visitor to Borne hastens to see, in which 
the benign and lovely art of Baphael has lighted up the 
splendid rooms of the Vatican with something of the light 
that never was on sea or shore. We confess that for our- 
selves one little picture from the same hand, to be met with 
here and there, and often far from the spot where it was 
painted, outvalues all those works of art ; but no one can 
dispute their beauty or importance. Bope Leo did not by 
so much as the touch of a pencil contribute to their perfec- 
tion, yet they are the chief glory of his time, and the chief 
element in his fame. He made them in so far that he pro- 
vided the means, the noble situation as well as ' the more 
vulgar provision which was quite as necessary, and he has 
therefore a right to his share of the applause — by which he 
is well rewarded for all he did; for doubtless the payment 
of the moment, the pleasure which he sincerely took in them, 
and the pride of so nobly taking his share in the lasting 
illumination of Borne were a very great recompense in 



598 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. [chap. 

themselves, without the harvest he has since reaped in 
the applause of posterity. Nowadays we do not perhaps 
so honour the patron of art as people were apt to do in 
the last century. And there are, no doubt, many now who 
worship Raphael in the Vatican without a thought of Leo. 
Still he is worthy to be honoured. He gave the young 
painter a free hand, believing in his genius and probably 
attracted by his more genial nature, while holding Michael 
Angelo, for whom he seems always to have felt a certain 
repugnance, at arm's length. 

We will not attempt to point out in Raphael's great mural 
paintings the flattering allusions to Leo's history and 
triumph which critics find there, nor yet the high purpose 
with which others hold the painter to have been moved in 
those great works. Bishop Creighton finds a lesson in them, 
which is highly edifying, but rather beyond what we should 
be disposed to look for. " The life of Raphael," he says, 
"expresses the best quality of the spirit of the Italian 
Renaissance, its belief in the power of culture to restore 
unity to life and implant serenity in the soul. It is clear 
that Raphael did not live for mere enjoyment, but that his 
time was spent in ceaseless activity animated by high hopes 
for the future." How this may be we do not know: but 
lean rather to the opinion that Raphael, like other men of 
great and spontaneous genius, did what was in him and did 
his best, with little ulterior purpose and small thought about 
the power of culture. It was his, we think, to show how 
art might best illustrate and with the most perfect effect the 
space given him to beautify, with a meaning not unworthy 
of the gracious work, but no didactic impulse. It was his 
to make these fine rooms, and the airy lightness of the 
brilliant loggie beautiful, with triumphant exposition of a 
theme full of pictorial possibilities. But what it should 
have to do with Luther, or how the one should counter- 
balance the other, it is difficult to perceive. Goethe on the 



in.] JULIUS II. — LEO X. 599 

other hand declares that going to Raphael's loggie from the 
Sistine chapel "we could scarcely bear to look at them. 
The eye was so educated and enlarged by those grand forms 
and the glorious completeness of all the 'parts that it could 
take no pleasure " in works so much less important. Such 
are the differences of opinion in all ages. It is the glory 
of this period of Roman history that at a time when the 
Apostolic See had lost so much, and when all its great 
purposes, its noble ideals, its reign of holiness and inspired 
wisdom had perished like the flower of the fields — when 
all that Gregory and Innocent had struggled their lives long 
to attain had dissolved like a bubble : when the Popes were 
no longer holy men, nor distinguished by any great and 
universal aim, but Italian princes like others, worse rather 
than better in some cases : there should have arisen, with 
a mantle of glory to hide the failure and the horror and 
the scorn, these two great brethren of Art — the one rugged, 
mournful, self-conscious, bowed down by the evil of the 
time, the other all sweetness and gladness, an angel of light, 
divining in his gracious simplicity the secrets of the skies. 
Leo the Pope was no such noble soul. He was only an 
urbane and skilful Medici, great to take every advantage of 
the divine slaves that were ready for his service — using 
them not badly, encouraging them to do their best, if not 
for higher motives yet to please him, the Sommo Pontefice, 
surely the best thing that they could hope for ; and to win 
such share of the ducats which came to him from the sale 
of the offices of the Vatican, the cardinals' hats, the papal 
knighthoods, and other trumpery, as might suffice for all 
their wants. He sold these and other things, indulgences 
for instance, sown broadcast over the face of the earth and 
raising crops of a quite different kind. But on the other 
hand he never sold a benefice. He remitted the tax on salt ; 
and he gave liberally to whoever asked him, and enjoyed 
life with all his heart, in itself no bad quality. 



600 



THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME. 



[chap. 



' ' The pontificate of Leo was the most gay and the most happy that 
Rome ever saw," says the chronicler. "Being much enamoured of 
building he took up with a great soul the making of San Pietro, which 
Julius, with marvellous art, had begun, lie ennobled the palace of the 
Vatican with triple porticoes, ample and long, of the most beautiful 
fabrication, with gilded roofs and ornamented by excellent pictures. 
He rebuilt almost from the foundations the church of our Lady of the 
Monte Ccelio, from which he had his title as cardinal, and adorned it 
with mosaics. Finally there was nothing which during all his life he 




kit 

A BRIC-A-BRAC SHOP. 



had more at heart or more ardently desired than the excellent name of 
liberal, although it was the wont ordinarily of all the others to turn 
their backs upon that virtue of liberality, and to keep far from it. He 
judged those unworthy of high station who did not with large and 
benign hand disperse the gifts of fortune, and above all those which 
were acquired by little or no fatigue. But while he in this guise gov- 
erned Rome, and all Italy enjoyed a gladsome peace, he was by a too 
early death taken from this world although still in the flower and height 
of his years." 

He died forty-five years old on December 1, 1521. 
The great works which one and another of the Popes thus 
left half done were completed — St. Peter's by Sixtus V, 



in.] JULIUS II. — LEO X. 601 

1590, and Paul V. 1615. The Last Judgment completing 
the Sistine chapel was finished by Michael Angelo in 1541 
under Clement VII. and Paul III. And thus the Eome of 
our days — the Eome which not as pilgrims, but as persons 
living according to the fashion of our own times, which com- 
pels us to go to and fro over all the earth and see whatever 
is to be seen, we visit every year in large numbers — was left 
more or less as it is now, for the admiration of the world. 
Much has been done since, and is doing still every day to 
make more intelligible and more evident the memorials of 
an inexhaustible antiquity — but in the Pome of the Popes, 
the Eome of Christendom, History has had but little and 
Art not another word to say. 



THE END. 



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